Rosamund Lupton

“When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing.”

“When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter.”

“I remembered back to leo's burial and holding your hand. I was eleven and you were six, your hand soft and small in mine. As the vicar said 'in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of eternal life' you turned to me, 'I don't want sure and certain hope I want sure and certain Bee.”

“Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you.”

“I reminded you I studied literature, didn't I? I've had an endless supply of quotations at my disposal, but they had always highlighted the inadequacy of my life rather than providing an uplifting literary score to it.”

“Pan life for gold and you will find it daily.”

“Todd added bourbons to the custards creams on the plate, arranging them in two neat yellow and brown rows, his annoyance expressed through the symmetry of biscuits.”

“sex and humor are the heart and lungs of a good relationship”

“Mums answer is so unexpected and I am a litte stunned, actually. I wonder whether, had I known the reason for my name as a child, I would have tried to live up to it. Instead of being a failed Arabella, I might have become a Shakespearean plucky Beatrice.”

“Mum said no one has ever called me by my first name so I've always assumed that even as a baby they could tell I wasn't an Arabella, a name with loops and flourishes in black-inked calligraphy; a name that contains within it girls called Bella or Bells or Belle - so many beautiful possibilities. No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside.”

“But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...”

“Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.”

“A selfish person can still love someone else, can't they? Even when they've hurt them and let them down.”

“I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.”

“Your paintings are staggeringly beautiful. Did I ever tell you that,or was I just too concerned that you weren't going to earn a living? I know the answer...I worried that the paint was so thickly applied that it might snap off and ruin someone's carpet, rather than realizing that you'd made color itself tactile.”

“Just thinking of your laughter gives me courage. . . ”

“And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit.”

“When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...”