Lionel Shriver Quotes

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.

I lost my father and went into a process of grief with it that was all about how to replace that grief, how to fill it, and I think there was something very desperate in the way that I was replacing it.

Grief - the actual, natural process of it - doesn't have a schedule that I can work my life around.

We know the Victorian way of dealing with death, which was not dealing with it. You'll never get over it but having the support of a counsellor who has been there hundreds of times is so important, to help you develop strategies to cope.

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

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.

I was struck after 9/11 by what seemed the assumption that everyone bereaved by that event was suffering the same thing. I wanted to explore how individual grief is, how complicated, how colored by the complexity of the mourner's relationship with the person who's died.

When in times of turmoil and breakup, do not cut or shave your head, because it will never end well.

To grieve is something extremely difficult, we don't even know how to begin to grieve, and I don't know how you can be taught to grieve.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.

Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain.

Television has never known what to do with grief, which resists narrative: the dramas of grief are largely internal - for the bereaved, it is a chaotic, intense, episodic period, but the chaos is by and large subterranean, and easily appears static to the friendly onlooker who has absorbed the fact of loss and moved on.

Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again.

I think you have to deal with grief in the sense that you have to recognize that you have it, and say that it's OK to have all the sadness.

When you've lost a loved one, you realise how grateful you are for any help in those moments, and any scheme that tries to help families during that terrible time gets my backing.

Losing a family member is extremely difficult for anyone to take. But the normal reaction is to want to get back to your work as soon as you can.

Teenagers too often have to deal with loss and death. You had to cope with the untimely death of your brother; how can young people deal with such tragedies?

No one can tell you what to expect or can offer a guide to grief. Because every relationship is so unique, no two people grieve the same way. And you have no idea how you are going to grieve till you are grieving.

I didn't realize I was still grieving for my father at 30-something.

Firemen have a culture of death. There are rituals, carefully constructed for the living, to process the dead.

When my dad died, I had to go to therapy.

A fundamental and unfortunate part of being alive is to suffer loss and to suffer grief.

We don't help people mourn in our society.

Most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak.