Anne Lamott Quotes

We live in grief for having left the womb, for having left the teat, then school, then home. In my case, it was leaving marriages, and the death of my wife.

Do i really want him dead? What i want... what i want is to have him back.

When somebody leaves this plane—or, if you like, goes into another room—those left behind sometimes try and stop loving—but this is a mistake, because even if you have loved only once in your life, you’re ruined.

The cold, the changed, perchance the dead, anew, The mourn'd, the loved, the lost,-too many, yet how few!

I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more.

Too many people I've loved dearly have left this earth. And some I've lost are still here breathing the same air. That grief can be comparable if not worse in its consumption.

I think you grieve different elements, you grieve your wife who's gone, you grieve the fact she had cancer and you had to watch her die, you grieve the fact the life you built isn't going to be the same as the one going forward. All these different elements hit you at different times.

It's just hard," Harry said finally, in a low voice, "to realize he won't write me again

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

I’ve lost so many people. Some I left on purpose and never looked back. Some were taken from me, and I never said good-bye.

If you no longer live, if you my beloved, my love, if you have died, all the leaves will fall in my breast, it will rain in my soul night and day, the snow will burn my heart, I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow, my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but I shall live

I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.

She thought of death like the seam of a hem: each time you lose someone close, it unraveled a little. You could still go along with your life, but you'd be forever tripping over something you previously took for granted.

When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.

Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever.

Why don't I watch the ocean?My lover's gone.No earthly ships will ever bring him home againbring him home again.

Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that-what we felt, what it meant- that's done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.

Seeing death is not as difficult as you might think. What's harder is to see people suffer. It's the people the dead left behind that get to you.

My beautiful wife is dead. She meant everything to me. Her laughter, her tears and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

I miss my mother very, very much.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.

A friend who dies, it's something of you who dies.

I hate death; it takes people away from you. You're left feeling rudderless.