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Barbara Kingsolver

"The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things it can kill."

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"The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things it can kill."

Exlpore more Grief quotes

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Asa Don Brown

"People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura oflife which bears no relation to true immortality but through which theycontinue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. Itis as though they were traveling abroad."

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Asa Don Brown

"To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,-Is such my future fate?The morn was dreary, must the eveBe also desolate?"

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Asa Don Brown

"Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness."

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Asa Don Brown

"Grief leads you to believe that life will never be ordinary again, and it never really will be for it is made extraordinary as it is touched and transformed by our greatest loves and deepest losses."

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Asa Don Brown

"My body is cracking from the pain I have swallowed so Many times, heaving with sobs I can no longer suppress, my dignity dissolving in my tears, the agony of these past few days ripping my skin to shreds."

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Asa Don Brown

"I give myself a good cry if I need it. But then I concentrate on the good things still in my life. I don't allow myself any more self-pity than that. A little each every morning, a few tears, and that's all."

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Asa Don Brown

"Everyone I have lost in the closing of a doorthe click of the lockis not forgotten, theydo not die but remainwithin the soft edgesof the earth, the ashof house fires and cancerin sin and forgivenesshuddled under old blanketsdreaming their way intomy hands, my heartclosing tight like fists."

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Asa Don Brown

"Once heaven is done with grandma, we'd like her back, thanks."

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Asa Don Brown

"Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver."

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Asa Don Brown

"And what this is, I realize, is life. I don't want it. I want my parents and I have for weeks. I've been trying to claw my way back to them, and now I am so close and he is telling me not to."

Explore more quotes by Barbara Kingsolver

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Barbara Kingsolver
"Why does a person spend money on a stamp to spout bile at a stranger?"
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Barbara Kingsolver
"It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion--joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"Like many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"God, why does a mortal man have children? It is senseless to love anything this much."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"She never says gracias because life is made of survival not grace, she says, and servants are paid to bring what they're asked."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it's because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head."
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Barbara Kingsolver
"Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining?"
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Barbara Kingsolver
"Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off."
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