salvation consists primarily in his beginning to sorrow earnestly over himself!

I have often discovered how profitable it is to give sorrow an ethical expression, not to erase the aesthetic factor in sorrow but to master it ethically. As long as sorrow is quiet and humble, I do not fear it; if it becomes vehement and passionate, sophistical so that it deludes me into despondency, I arise, I brook no rebellion, I will have nothing in the world cheat me of what I have from God's hand as a gift of grace. I do not chase sorrow away, do not try to forget it, I repent.

From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.

The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion.

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.

Your grief won't go away; it's not a door you can close,or a book you can put back on the shelf,or a kiss you can give back once it's given. This is the way the world is now. Keep the worst things to yourself, like a bone in your throat.

At first it appeared as if something with wings had fallen from above... perhaps an angel who had faltered then drowned, in tears of this poor tired world.

I had lost my mother and my father and my sister, and sometimes when I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window, I wondered if perhaps I hadn't lost myself as well

People really could be one way outside, when inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed.

A lot of people don't know what to do about grief. I don't blame you for a thing.

She had been grief stricken as her father lay dying but now she felt weightless, the way people do when they're no longer sure they have a reason to be connected to this world.

Even as I hold you I think of you as someone gone far, far away. Your eyes the color of pennies in a bowl of dark honey bringing sweet light to someone else your black hair slipping through my fingers is the flash of your head going around a corner your smile, breaking before me, the flippant last turn of a revolving door, emptying you out, changed, away from me. Even as I hold you I am letting go.