Anne Lamott Quotes

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.

I've lost someone, too; someone I loved. I know how you feel." - Does it get easier? "Yes. But you'll never be the same again.

You can't go to Amazon and order a book on how you handle grief. There's books on it, sure. But there's no tried and true manual. You just have to live that out. There's no formula to heal.

Grief is natural,' she said. 'Overcoming it is a matter of choice.

That grief is light which can take counsel.

It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief . . . lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while it's not so overwhelming.

It's hard to make progress with grief.

Bones heal, but the loss of my friend will never heal.

(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-children's will be. But we learn to live with that love.

Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.

People talk about grief as if it's kind of an unremittingly awful thing, and it is. It is painful, but it's a very, very interesting sort of thing to go through and it really helps you out.

When my husband died, people kept telling me not to cry. People kept trying to help me to forget. But I didn't want to forget. [...] So I realize, that if it's hard for me, how much harder it must be for you.

When your mother dies, it really hurts. But with time, you get used to it. That's nature's way.

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.

The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.

I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.

It's wrong," he says. "It doesn't matter if your parents are in a better place, they aren't here with you, and that's wrong, Tris. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it's okay is a liar.

The idea of losing someone that you love could throw you into a situation where you could not see your future and you really would be living in the past.

Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving.

Because if she let go of her grief even for a minute it would only hit her harder when she bumped into it again.

It's different when the person you love dies. There's an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there's the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help, believe me. When the object of your love just disappears, there's no way to deal with the grief and pain.

I think that people always say when people pass away that time heals all wounds. And that's probably the biggest lie. It's not true. I think we all need to remember that it is always still tough, and it's like losing a piece of your heart.

Losing a wife can be very hard. In my case, it was almost impossible.