P. D. James Quotes

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.

Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.

Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how much anger is mixed up with their grief. In fact, often I think the anger that they feel is a form of grief; it's a kind of raging against what's happening.

When my young men began the killing, my heart was hurt.

In 1957's 'There's No You,' Sinatra is suspended at the intersection of a loss he can't face and a memory he can't relinquish.

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.

I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never go away, and it is probably the biggest failure, and I have to live with that.

All I know is it destroyed my family, it destroyed my marriage to Sylvester and I will never get over it.

There's definitely still a lot of hurt from losing my guys or the fact that I got out and I felt like it wasn't my time yet.

Yes, I have made a woman cry.

I love my son, but I was never there for him, so I understand why he hates me.

They say time heals all wounds, but sometimes you wonder.

But while our parting was mutually acceptable and even expedient, still it was painful. And I would like to think it hurt both of us, for I certainly felt it: a wrenching inside, like some small but improbably necessary organ was no longer in there, that it was missing, torn or fallen out. And at the time I'd thought that was the end of it; what was missing was gone forever

Everyday he got up. Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movment could save him, and he moved and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you.

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.

I was right when I said I'd never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your heart till you can't ever do anything else except look back.

Alone, he must bear the weight of a sin he dare not confess to the one person he loves…and has lost.

I drew the curtains to conceal the sight of my father's farewell; my spite was sharp as broken glass.

Our lives are marked and shaped by our regrets. Things we all want to take back and can’t. In a perfect world, we would never hurt the ones we love or cause hurt to befall them. But the world isn’t perfect and neither are we.

I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and the omega of my parents' suffering.

After each dream, Frankie woke with a start, soaked in tears. But she found no relief in the peaceful silence of her room, because there everything was real. And the guilt was too immense to bear. Each time she opened her eyes, she'd quickly shut them. And wish that she had woken up for the very last time.

Sadness is a state of sin.

O the anguish of the thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them.

If I had cared about her as I should have, as I thought I did, how could I have let her go?