“There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.”

“The grief of children was unconditional, fueled by the implicit belief that it would last forever; for a child, grief was not grief unless it was eternal.”

“Who sleeps at night? No one is sleeping.
In the cradle a child is screaming.
An old man sits over his death, and anyone
young enough talks to his love, breathes
into her lips, looks into her eyes.”

“I wake up in that state of grief when you can tell you've been mourning even in your sleep.”

“Grief doesn't come in a landslide. It seeps in,while you are sleeping. First you start in dreaming. Then your wake-up time carries over the sadness. And last your whole days are filled like a tumbler of water,filled with an aching that drips over the edge and doesn't have anywhere to go.”

“Grief is like cancer. It ebbs and flows within you. Then, it changes and transforms you. Forever. Grief. Cancer. Both force you to face your worst fear—death. Grief and cancer. Both undermine your optimism of life. You finally see the cup is really just half full, even if you believed otherwise your whole life. Both teach you to believe that bad things can happen to people, whether they’re good or bad or rich or poor or young or old, alike. Grief and cancer corner the market for all. Grief and cancer take all comers. Both rule. Do they always win? I begin to wonder.”