Amanda Banic

“Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that
someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living
is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day
you look down and see how much pain has eroded.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got that moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered , whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it.”
― Libba Bray, Going Bovine

“Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid
being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly
of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I
stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I
would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my
father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come
home to a house that felt too big for us.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper