“I am crying over the loss of something I never had.”

“Placing my head on my knees, I let the irrational tears fall unrestrained. I am crying over the loss of something I never had. How ridiculous. Mourning something that never was - my dashed hopes, my dashed dreams, and my soured expectations.”

“I haven't cried since Mom died. I mean, after something like that, what's left to cry about, right? But I let myself cry now. Loss is loss. Doesn't take death to create it. (266)”

“The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.”

“Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad.A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present.”

“It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had.”