"and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart."
— Jodi Picoult

"Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time. "
— Sarah Dessen (The Truth About Forever)

"Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it."
— P.D. James

"If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.

They're right. It does.

However much you beg it to stop.

It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.

It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life...

All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.

Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.

Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.

And then the world turns...

And somebody falls off...

And oh God it's such a long way down.

Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller...

Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.

We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.

Trying to measure how far we have to fall.

No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives...

Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.

"Time's a great healer."

"At least it was quick."

"The world keeps turning."

Oh Alec

Alec's dead."
— Alan Moore (Swamp Thing Vol. 5: Earth to Earth)

"And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;"
— William Cullen Bryant

" For My Dad ~ "I miss you every day."

Lost love is still love, Eddie. It just takes a different form, that's all. You can't hold their hand... You can't tousle their hair... But when those senses weaken another one comes to life... Memory... Memory becomes your partner. You hold it... you dance with it... Life has to end, Eddie... Love doesn't.

"
— Mitch Albom

"It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost. "
— Lev Grossman (The Magicians)

"Miles had sworn his officer's oath to the Emperor less than two weeks ago, puffed with pride at his achievement. In his secret mind he had imagined himself keeping that oath through blazing battle, enemy torture, what-have-you, even while sharing cynical cracks afterwards with Ivan about archaic dress swords and the sort of people who insisted on wearing them.
But in the dark of subtler temptations, those that hurt without heroism for consolation, he foresaw, the Emperor would no longer be the symbol of Barrayar in his heart.
Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. At least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky....
He knew who he served now. And why he could not quit. And why he must not fail."
— Lois McMaster Bujold (The Mountains of Mourning)

"It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow."
— Toni Morrison (Sula)

"It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart."
— Ecclesiastes

"I think clapping is how mourn."
— Bob Hicok