When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.

I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for heaven than I ever have been since.

Heavens knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Never be ashamed of honest tears.

Living in a world of white oppressors, blacks have no time for a neutral God.

I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood.

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic if it is pulled out I shall die.

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn. For his mourners will all be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.

The elevation of grief to a status transcending that which it sorrows.