Rick Riordan Quotes

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.

Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. - "Indian Boy Love Song #1

Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.

While I did a lot of research, I ended up feeling that the best way to write about grief was to describe it from the inside out - the show the strange intensities that come along with it, the peculiar thoughts, the longing for that past - all the strange moments of thinking you glimpse the dead person on the street, or in your dreams.

I know that I will never find my father in any other man who comes into my life, because it is a void in my life that can only be filled by him.

I had a wonderful family including my aunts, uncles and cousins but they've all gone to heaven.

Even as a child I had a strong relationship with yearning and desire. And loss. Those things spoke to me.

I think of John every day. I do try to block it, but December 8th is not the only day I think of him.

If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes.

The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head.

On the rare occasions when I spend a night in Oxford, the keeping of the hours by the clock towers in New College, and Merton, and the great booming of Tom tolling 101 times at 9 pm at Christ Church are inextricably interwoven with memories and regrets and lost joys. The sound almost sends me mad, so intense are the feelings it evokes.

It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

All I wanted was for my mom to say, 'I love you, and I'm here for you.' I never got that.

I think about my mom every day.

When he died, he took a big piece of me with him. I'm sure that every time I do something, I'll think about having done it with Hef.

And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed. Just the way, even at that time fully two years after my mother's death, I'd catch myself thinking about her as alive; and would suddenly remember, an admonitory finger of grief upon my breast, that she was gone.

There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

I used to dream about turning back time, about reclaiming the things I'd lost and the person I used to be.

The course of our lives follows ancient and immutable laws, with an ancient, changeless rhythm. Dreams never come true, and the instant they are shattered, we realize how the greatest joys of life lie beyond the realm of reality. The instant they are shattered we are sick with longing for the days when they flamed within us. Our fate spends itself in this succession of hope and nostalgia.

Perhaps - I want the old days back again and they'll never come back, and I am haunted by the memory of them and of the world falling about my ears.

Night is the time to weep,To wet with unseen tearsThose graves of memory where sleepThe joys of other years.

My tears are like the quiet drift of petals from some magic rose; and all my grief flows from the rift of unremembered skies and snows. I think that if I touched the earth, it would crumble; it is so sad and beautiful, so tremulously like a dream.

My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.