Anne Enright Quotes

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

One of the things that happens to people in grief is they secretly think they're crazy, because they realize they are thinking things that don't make sense.

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.

Nobody knows the pain I've been through.

In grief we know the worst of what we feel but who can tell the end of what we fear?

Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel.

I can’t imagine what my school friends must have thought was going on because I was wandering around in some kind of dream. I felt as though my insides had been taken out which is, I now realize, the right feeling.

So much wanting and longing, clutching, desiring, passion and hatred and terrible need. Here, death was suitable, there was room for it, the grip of life's relentless urges slackened, replaced by this icy simplicity. This wasnt her death. It was his. That was the sad and honest truth. Though it would stay with her, it would be more like a black onyx heart on a silver chain, worn privately, under her clothes, close to her body, all her life. The guilt, the beauty, everything. It wasnt over, it had only begun. Well ok then, Okay.

I held his gaze. I could see the storm in his eyes. I knew he was confused. I could see the fear. Then there was the love. I saw it. The fierceness in his eyes. I believed it. I could see it clearly. But it was too late now. The love wasn't enough. Everyone always said that love was enough. It wasn't. Not when your soul was shattered.

She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she'd remember the brutal fact that had caused it.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

I feel the monster of grief again, writhing in the empty space where my heart and stomach used to be. I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.

When I was 20, my mother died and I went off the rails a little bit. I kinda had my slightly dark period.

Sorrow lies like a heartbeat behind everything I have written.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

And from my place, and from the time that I went through my divorce, I also had my father pass away in the middle of all that. And it kind of made everything else just kind of like the back burner, you know.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

My father's death, my move, and my frightening and difficult delivery created a tremendous amount of stress, pain, and sadness for me. I was practically devastated beyond recovery.

The moment something happens to one you love, it's twenty times more intense. You experience pain and enlightenment on a much vaster scale.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

The times in my life when I've been my thinnest, I've been a walking psycho wreck. Forget the fact that I was basically starving myself; skinny was usually due to some kind of loss. Death. Rejection. Divorce.

People die because they find living too painful.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

I'm in a great rage now, as I understand how many lives we have lost.

It was the saddest day of my life.