Bookmark these powerful grief quotes from books. May these quotes provide a space for reflection and healing in your grieving process.
Everyone experiences grief at some point in life. It can be hard to express these emotions in words, but fortunately, many great authors have shared their beautiful observations to help us better understand this shared experience.
When we lose someone or something important, words can help us find comfort by reminding us that we are not alone. Although these quotes may be heavy, they also show that it is okay to feel the way you do right now- at any stage.
Today, I have compiled some of my favorite quotes from the featured books on grief and loss book list.
If a quote resonates with you, I hope you’ll consider exploring one of the highlighted books to help expand your experience with these authors. I’ve included memoirs, essay collections, fiction for adults, romance books, and even young adult books.
Please feel free to pin these images or save them to your phone to remind you that you aren’t alone- I’m sending love to you through this strange virtual portal.
Powerful Grief Quotes from Books
Grief is for People Quote:
“It’s impossible to predict how much you’ll miss something when it’s gone, to game grief in advance. We fend off the worry that we’re taking our lives for granted by feeding ourselves the lie that we understand the value if their components.” (Buy the Book)
Here After Quote:
“Grief is chronic pain. When will others allow the mourning to live without expecting them to be cured?” (Buy the Book)
A Heart that Works Quote:
“My favorite historical response to someone hearing about a “big” death comes from the character Henry Clerval in Mary Shelley’s masterwork, Frankenstein.
When Henry learns that his best friend Victor Frankenstein’s young brother William has been murdered, he says, “I can offer you no consolation, my friend. Your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?”
Perfect. There is no consolation. The disaster is irreparable. I’ve read Frankenstein twice since our Henry died. It is my companion in days of grief.
It should surprise no one who reads it that Mary Shelley was a bereaved mother.” (Buy the Book)
Crying in H Mart Quote:
“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.” (Buy the Book)
When Breath Becomes Air Quote:
“I began to realize that coming in such close contact with my own mortality had changed both nothing and everything. Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. The problem wasn’t really a scientific one. The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.” (Buy the Book)
One More We Saw Stars Quote:
“Grief at its peak has a terrible beauty to it, a blinding fission of every emotion. The world is charged with significance, with meaning, and the world around you, normally so solid and implacable, suddenly looks thin, translucent.” (Buy the Book)
Late Migrations Quote:
“Blessed are the parents whose final words on leaving—the house, the car, the least consequential phone call—are always “I love you.” They will leave behind children who are lost and still found, broken and, somehow, still whole.” (Buy the Book)
Unlikely Animals Quote:
“It’s unfair how the body crumbles while the soul still lives in it.” (Buy the Book)
A Quiet Life Quote:
“He thinks of all this- this is the price he has paid for loving so much, and it doesn’t feel better, but it makes sense. It seems reasonable.” (Buy the Book)
A Man Called Ove Quote:
“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it’s often one of the great motivations for living.
Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.
We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.” (Buy the Book)
Lily & the Octopus Quote:
“It’s natural, as our loved ones age, to start grieving their loss. Even before we lose them.” (Buy the Book)
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird Quote:
“The human brain is wired to cope with grief. It knows even as we fall into unfathomably dark places, there will be light again, and if we just keep moving forward in one brave straight line, however slowly, we’ll find our way back again.” (Buy the Book)
I Liked My Life Quote Lesson:
“Every new death brings back the full weight of those already gone.” (Buy the Book)
The One-in-a-Million Boy Quote:
“You know, one meets so many people, the years pass and pass, but there are certain times, certain people. . . They take up room. So much room.” (Buy the Book)
The Last Love Note Quote: “How long is it reasonable to drag out your recovery from grief until you’re expected to get your act together again?
Or maybe that’s where I’m going wrong. You don’t recover from it. There is no “healed” moment. You just absorb it into your new life, somehow, and go from there.” (Buy the Book)
Looking for Alaska Quote:
“We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.” (Buy the Book)
Goodbye Days Quote:
“Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.” (Buy the Book)
Message in a Bottle Quote:
“Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever.” (Buy the Book)
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