After Annie Quotes

“Annie had been sure of things, not in a way that was obnoxious most of the time, in a way that was soothing. There was a plan, but it ran in the background, like the tech guy said when his work laptop was acting up. “You’ve got a lot of stuff running in the background,” the guy had said, but Bill hadn’t even known it was there. Now he knew what Annie had been running in the background: meals, doctors’ appointments, story hour at the library, swim classes at the Y. But that wasn’t really what was missing now. It was the other thing, the thing that meant you didn’t feel homesick.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Maybe grief was like homesickness, something that wasn’t just about a specific person, but about losing that feeling that you were where you belonged,”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“One need never be ashamed or afraid of grieving. Those who do not grieve cannot feel.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Maybe mad is just sad in disguise.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“She brought us sunshine every day, We always wanted her to stay. She was the best nurse that we knew, You let us share her with all of you. When Nurse Anne tucked you in at night And stood there and turned off the light, She always said, sleep tight, good night. We miss her so much every day, We always wanted her to stay. She made us laugh, but now we cry, Because we had to say good-bye.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“But the puppies were what puppies always were, little nuggets of warm, soft possibility.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“and providing it had shaken something loose in him, so that the edges of the pain were less sharp, more pine needles, less razor blades. The knot in his chest had loosened somehow.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Stop thinking about the future,” Maude had told Annemarie the last time she went to see the Mennonites. “Be present in the moment.” She sounded Buddhist, but then Annemarie assumed all religions had more or less the same underpinnings. “How could anyone expecting a baby not think about the future?” she’d said. “If you do you will miss so much,” Maude said. “I have eight children, and the best times are when I see them as they are now and don’t think about someday.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“You need to bring your wife back to life for her children. You need to let them know that you will never forget her, and that you will help them never forget her, too. You need to let them know that sadness shouldn’t lead to silence. You need to find a way to do that every day.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“It’ll be like old times,” Annemarie said, but Annie didn’t want old times, not really. She’d liked the times she had right then.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“I never had children, Mr. Brown,” Miss Evelyn added. “I played the piano. But that taught me that practice makes perfect, and every key is different and distinct. Here’s your young man.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“The years between twenty-two and thirty-seven made a universe.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Grief was like spring, maybe. You thought you were getting out from under it and then it came roaring back. And getting out from under it felt like forgetting, and forgetting felt like treason.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. —W. S. Merwin”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“Maybe grief was like homesickness, something that wasn’t just about a specific person, but about losing that feeling that you were where you belonged, even if where you belonged seemed as everyday as brushing your teeth.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“I know you. How many times had she said that to Annemarie? That was the hole in her heart now, not just that Annie was gone, but that there was no one in the world who knew her, not really.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“The great thing about addiction was that you became a fluent liar. Over the years Annemarie had perfected all kinds of excuses when she had made plans with”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“mean becoming a person who would be poisoned by loss and heartbreak and still pretend that neither existed.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“most important event of your entire life, to lose—to have your mother die.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“People can’t be better than they are,”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“The problem with crying was that it made her believe it was all true, what was happening.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“He’d always been so proud that he and Annie shared the burden so it didn’t feel like a burden. Now he knew he’d been kidding himself. He couldn’t remember the names of the teachers, the doctors, the kids’ friends, without checking her phone. She had ninety-one messages. He hadn’t listened to any of them.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“phone constantly with Bill about Ali’s eating,”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“The incessant drumbeat of women talking to other women. It never ended, except when one of them died, and then the silence left by that one woman was as big as the sky.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“They were all floating in some in-between where nothing seemed right. Waiting for the rest of life, whatever that was, a future that felt like a betrayal.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“You know what really bothers me,” Ali said in the car, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “That my father can have another wife, but we can’t ever have another mother.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“None of the meditation sessions anticipated trying to quiet your mind, and in the quiet, hearing only the vast silence of eternal absence where your bestie forever had once been. Forever was so much shorter than she’d always thought.”⁣⁣⁣”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie

“People can’t be better than they are, sis,” Annie had said.”
― Anna Quindlen, After Annie