Carolin

“And this, among other reasons, is why I am against the word “grief,” which in contemporary culture seems to indicate a process that has an end point: the sooner you get there, the sooner you prove yourself to be a good sport at living, and the less awkward people around you will feel. Sometimes people ask me where I am in the grieving process, and I wonder whether they understand anything at all about losing someone. How lonely the dead would feel, if the living were to stand up from death’s shadow, clap their hands, dust their pants, and say to themselves and to the world, I am done with my grieving; from this point on it’s life as usual, business as usual.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“There is no real salvation from one's own life; books, however, off the approximation of it.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“Thinking about my children is like air, like time. Thinking about them will only end when I reach the end of my life.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow

“However, I do believe that we learn to suffer better. We become more discerning in our suffering: there are things that are worth suffering for, and then there is the rest—minor suffering and inessential pain—that is but pebbles, which can be ignored or kicked aside. We also become less rigid: suffering suffuses one’s being; one no longer resists.”
― Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow