China Machado Quotes

The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.

After my husband died, I could not write much - I could not concentrate. I was too exhausted most of the time even to contemplate writing. But I did take notes - not for fiction, but for a journal, or diary, of this terrible time. I did not think that I would ever survive this interlude.

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.

Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.

When my dad died a lot of songs came, and they're still coming.

How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads.

I've written several deeply personal songs this year, which I really love. Some of them came out of intense sadness. This has been an extremely difficult year for me.

I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.

When Garcia died, and I decided not to play, I came out here.

I started writing after the death of my grandfather - memories, poems, etc. It was very personal; for years I did not share my writing with anyone.

As soon as something happens to us in America, everyone begins talking about healing. But before you heal, you have to mourn.

I very much faced my mother's death with hard, arduous and time-consuming labor. The more I would do, the less I would feel.

I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn't visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.

Grief reveals itself in the most mundane activities, like eating. It's never when you're looking at old pictures.

I think what I was unconsciously expressing in 'Black Rainbow' was a very abstract and metaphorical grief, in the way I had suppressed my grief about my mother dying. In retrospect I realise I started writing 'Mandy' as a sort of antidote to that, to sort of express those emotions, to purge that grief.

People deal with death differently; some even laugh at funerals.

When Rajesh Khanna died, I cried so much, my husband was confused.

Why are you weeping ? Did you imagine that I was immortal ?

I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.

Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.

I have a picture I keep in my wallet of my father's corpse... I keep that picture in my wallet to show people who show me baby pictures.

The thing you see in survivors is that they express feelings - I won't say some of the things they tell their doctors, when doctors tell them they're going to die in six months. Boy, do they let the doctor know how they feel about that statement.

I remember the day my mother died, and it's still hard to talk about it. I just blocked it out.

When my father died in my arms it had such a profound affect on me that at that very moment when my dad passed I realized that I needed to face my own fears.

When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.