Veronica Roth Quotes

By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze.

When my young men began the killing, my heart was hurt.

Everyday he got up. Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movment could save him, and he moved and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul.

It's... a hard thing for a director, to think you came up with a shot, something from your mind, and someone died while doing it. It's the worst thing you'll ever have to live with. It was very hard for me to get back on the horse again.

My second wife, the mother of one of my sons, died of murder. I was not with her, but I could have saved her. I think.

The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. It's like a cancer that's metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?

As crime writers, we put these characters, year after year, book after book, through the most horrendous trauma, dealing with grief and death and loss and violence. We can't pretend that these things don't affect these characters; they have to. If they don't, then you're essentially writing cartoons.

When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and have done.

In the morning he was lying dead on one of the beds fully clothed. He was dead. I got the impression he wanted to go, and I must have killed him. I can't remember strangling him. I just sat there shocked.

It is devastating, losing a parent. I don't really know what the effect is, but I suppose people might call me an ambitious man, and I'd say that an ambitious man is a damaged man.

It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt.

I know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.

Killing rips the soul apart.

Despite everything my mom and doctor and dad have said to me about blame, I can't stop thinking what I know. And I know that my aunt Helen would still be alive today if she just bought me one present like everybody else. She would be alive if I were born on a day that didn't snow.

You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.

So to really be able to dive into what does it mean to be broken by an experience, and I developed it just through research and talking and understanding the truth of what it means to lose everything.

Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.

He could not understand why he had needed so many words to explain what he felt in war because one was enough: fear. ~Jose Aracadio Segundo Buendia After the second banana slaughter

But I don't know what to him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you.

sorrow is easier than guilt.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.