Merle Shain Quotes

Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.

Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light. When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you’re lagging, I may remember him!

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

It isn't up to me to break his heart; that's time's job.

When you put so much effort to forget someone, the effort itself becomes a memory. Then you have to forget the forgetting, and that too is memorable.

No one teaches you how to do this. How do you let go of someone who you love so much?

Don't be sorry you loved him. That's part of you, part you have to let go.

When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time.

Our love is strong. Why carry on without me?

There was a lot they didn’t tell you about death, she had discovered, and one of the biggies was how long it took the ones you loved most to die in your heart.

Heart, we will forget him, You and I, tonight! You must forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.

They say that time heals a broken heart, but time has stood still since we've been apart.

These are the intensities that one cannot live with, that he has to outgrow if he wants to survive. But who can help grieving for them? If the blood vessels could hold them, how much better to keep those early loves with us?

And no. I must not go on thinking. For the pain will never go away. You just go on and live. In the dust of desertion. Still falling where last I loved.

You'll remember someone who broke your heart, and you'll think to yourself, 'Oh yes, I remember how that feels.' But you can't.

People like music when they're in love, but they don't need it as much. You need music when you're missing someone or you're pining for someone or you're forgetting someone or you're trying to process what just happened.

One makes mistakes; that is life. But it is never a mistake to have loved.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

It's impossible to compete with the dead. I wished I could stop trying.

Time cancels young pain.

What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood.