Jandy Nelson Quotes

Death itself is too big to take in, she already sees that; the loss comes at you instead in an infinite number of small installments that can never be paid off.

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.

I lost my husband, and it's a horrific thing to live through.

Going away to prison was nothing, I'm just saying, compared to losing my mom.

Losing a wife can be very hard. In my case, it was almost impossible.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room-but eventually, you learn to live with it.

I was horrified. Absolutely heart sick. All I could think of was that after 23 years together, I'd lost my faithful ally. I couldn't sleep, couldn't get the loss out of my mind. It was like discovering that someone in my family had died.

New grief, when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or the dead or the missing one. I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.

Bones heal, but the loss of my friend will never heal.

Loss as muse. Loss as character. Loss as life.

Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain.

When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down; it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.

When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

With Keith's [my fiance] murder, I was changed. I thought I would be a prosecutor forever, but there were so many days when I would leave the courtroom during a trial, and go down the hall to the ladies' room, and go into a little stall, and cry.

Jennifer had never liked the pain of remembering what had happened, but for Theo it was the pain that kept Laura alive in his memory. He was afraid that if it ever began to heal she would disappear.

Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

It's wrong," he says. "It doesn't matter if your parents are in a better place, they aren't here with you, and that's wrong, Tris. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it's okay is a liar.

There are some losses we never get over.

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

Losing my parents was probably the hardest and deepest blow from which I've had to recover.

I lost my brother when he was 30, and that was devastating for me. I don't know if I will ever get over it.

As someone who has lived the nightmare of losing a child, I know that the enormous hole left behind remains forever.

Grief is a terrible, painful place. You can't grind away on grief in a solid way and say, 'I'm going to work on this until it's over' because it will be with you for the rest of your life, whatever you do. So, you deal with it and move on.