top of page
Exlpore more Grief quotes

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

"How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart."

"She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead."

"If he goes and dies on me now, I know I'll go completely insane."

"But I have to confess, I'm glad you two had at least a few months of happiness together."I'm not glad," says Peeta. "I wish we had waited until the whole thing was done officially."This takes even Caesar aback. "Surely even a brief time is better than no time?"Maybe I'd think that, too, Caesar," says Peeta bitterly, "If it weren't for the baby."

"Alas, I had always loved sorrow and grief, but only for myself, for myself; for them I wept in my pity. I stretched out my arms to them in my despair, accusing, cursing, and despising myself. I told them that I had done all this, I alone, that I had brought them corruption, contagion, and lies!"

"The only time I get to be alone is while traveling.'Except this week,' Charlie said.He turned his head and she saw herself reflected in his shades. 'True. And you're not at all what I expected.'Not that Connor had had any idea what to expect. But he would've preferred if she hadn't been the beautiful blonde who wore skimpy red bikini tops and starred in his dreams last night."
Explore more quotes by John Steinbeck

"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."

"Casy said solemnly, "This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don't know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters. An' now his dead, an' that don't matter..."

"But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there."

"...many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased. I remember a man in Salinas who in his middle years traveled to Honolulu and back, and that journey continued for the rest of his life. We could watch him in his rocking chair on his front porch, his eyes squinted, half-closed, endlessly traveling to Honolulu."

"Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard."

"We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way."

"Lanser had been in Belgium and France twenty years before and he tried not to think what he knew-that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds."

"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
bottom of page