Thomas Pynchon Quotes

Everybody who undergoes a death and finds themselves grieving is obsessed with — or maybe overly focused on — the idea that they can’t display self-pity, they have to be strong. Actually there are a lot of reasons why you are going to feel sorry for yourself, but that’s your first concern.

All griefes with bread are lesse.

It sustained me... I can't tell you how much their support meant to me when I was leaving and coming back and even while I was gone, there was a part of me that knew people were pulling for me.

I'm not looking for sympathy at all.

I think from losing my mother, I appreciate having good people around me.

She was overstrained with grief and loneliness: almost any shoulder would have done as well.

There's a lot of responsibility involved in sharing a very personal story with a lot of people, and it's easier for others not to know about things - and I know that. But in terms of the general climate, socially, these are things people have to deal with on a daily basis. We hear so many negative stories but rarely do we get positivity. We have memes of cute cats and puppies and things like that, but if they didn't exist, people would be a lot more unhappy. We need more things like that.

Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags, being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.

I know," she said. "You have a stone in your heart, and some days it's so heavy there is nothing to be done. But you don't have to be alone for it. You should have come to me. I understand.

This is not to say I don’t feel my own grief, which can hit powerfully at unexpected times. It’s just that the telling does not automatically bring on my own upset, as people assume. I deal more with their reaction than they do with mine, and so you have to choose your timing.

Those of you who are strong need to be there for those who have lost someone today. We have to be here for each other right now.

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears.

No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow, But no man's virtue nor sufficiency To be so moral when he shall endure The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel: My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

And that's just it, isn't it? That's how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.

You can bear anything if it is not your fault.

Two days after my dad's funeral, my mom went on a mission. I never understood it until then--that sometimes a spy doesn't need a cover so much as she needs a shield.

I think I'm going to cry, this is crazy." "No, you're just processing. Go ahead and cry." "I thought men got nervous around crying females." "I'm a Marine, remember? We're trained to handle anything.

By remembering that I don't know sadness or pain like the people do in the camp and to be sad will not help them.

When something tragic has happened, you'll find that you, the tragicee, become the person that has to make everything comfortable for everyone else.... As a tragicee and future divorcee, you'll also find that people will question you on the biggest decisions you've ever made in your life as though you hadn't thought about them at all before – as though, through their twenty questions and dubious faces, they're going to shine light on something that you missed the hundredth time around during your darkest hours.

There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.

Explanations don't comfort. You won't feel better if you know why. It won't hurt any less.

There's so much I wish for these days, but most of all, I wish you were here. It's strange, but before I met you, I couldn't remember the last time that I cried. Now, it seems that tears come easily to me...but you have a way of making my sorrows seem worthwhile, of explaining things in a way that lessens my ache. You are a treasure, a gift, and when we're together again, I intend to hold you until my arms are weak and I can do it no longer. My thoughts of you are sometimes the only things that keep me going.

Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

It's important for us not to lose sight of the fact that this is a family that's grieving and there's been a tremendous loss. And we all have to rally around that piece of it.