2010 Mushrooms Grief Quotes

Toadstools
The toadstools are starting to come
up,
circular and dry.
Nothing will touch them,
Gophers or chipmunks, wasps or swallows.
They glow in the twilight like rooted will-o'-the-wisps.
Nothing will touch them.
As though little roundabouts from the bunched unburiable,
Powers, dominions,
As though orphans rode herd in the short grass,
as though they had heard the call,
They will always be with us,
transcenders of the world.
Someone will try to stick his beak into their otherworldly styrofoam.
Someone may try to taste a taste of forever.
For some it's a refuge, for some a shady place to fall down.
Grief is a floating barge-boat,
who knows where it's going to moor? ~ Charles Wright

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence
but more generally takes the form of apathy ~ Joseph Conrad

From my distance the loss was theoretical, and though I couldn't have said so, I preferred it that way. I felt relieved to be so far away, because I was excused from grieving. I felt nothing but tenderness for her, but there was an emotional emancipation to being here and not there. Even though I didn't believe in God or heaven, I could childishly go on believing that she was still around. When it happened, the specific timing of my grandmother's death seemed like a footnote: She died just after I went away. But a lesson would persist as I formed and unformed long-distance relationships over the years. Going away could free you from feeling too much. ~ Elisabeth Eaves

Wine is an escape from grief,
a slip into sleep,
a cool forgetting of the hot pains of day.
What better cure for being human? ~ Euripides

A plague of sighing and grief! It blows a man up like a bladder. ~ William Shakespeare

Melancholy isn't, of course, a disorder that needs to be cured. It's a species of intelligent grief which arises when we come face to face with the certainty that disappointment is written into the script from the start.
We have not been singled out. Marrying anyone, even the most suitable of beings, comes down to a case of identifying which variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for.
In an ideal world, marriage vows would be entirely rewritten. At the altar, a couple would speak thus: "We accept not to panic when, some years from now, what we are doing today will seem like the worst decision of our lives. Yet we promise not to look around, either, for we accept that there cannot be better options out there. Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species."
After the solemn repetition of the last sentence by the congregation, the couple would continue: "We will endeavor to be faithful. At the same time, we are certain that never being allowed to sleep with anyone else is one of the tragedies of existence. We apologize that our jealousies have made this peculiar but sound and non-negotiable restriction very necessary. We promise to make each other the sole repository of our regrets rather than distribute them through a life of sexual Don Juanism. We have surveyed the different options for unhappiness, and it is to each other we have chosen to bind ourselves."
Spouses who had been cheated upon would no longer be at liberty fu ~ Alain De Botton

Illness might progressively vanish so might identity. Grief might be diminished, but so might tenderness. Traumas might be erased but so might history. Infirmities might disappear, but so might vulnerability. Chance would become mitigated, but so, inevitably, would choice. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example. ~ Rebecca West

It's not always easy growing up in an inner-city area, but in my music I want to show people that you can turn it into something positive. ~ Tinchy Stryder

Does it ever get easier?" she asked.
I nodded. "It does," I said. You reach a point where you realize that your life must go on regardless. You choose to live or you choose to die. But then there are moments, things that you see, something funny on the street or or a good joke that you hear, a television program that you want to share, and it makes you miss the person who's gone terribly and then it's not grief at all, it's more a sort of bitterness at the world for taking them away from you. I think of Bastiaan every day, of course. But I've grown accustomed to his absence. ~ John Boyne

Grief, unresisted, is grace. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt anymore, it doesn't mean it doesn't rip your heart out ... In great grief, there's an incredible love in it. In love there's a tinge of bitter. In true love. My teacher used to say 'all love is bittersweet'. All things experienced fully, reveal their opposite. ~ Adyashanti

Why not laugh again, and let your joy be my monument? ~ Stephanie Roberts

But the thing people don't seem to realize is that I don't want to not feel like this. How can I not feel like this? My sadness feels right. It … weighs the right amount, crushes me just enough. ~ Paula Hawkins

She knew how to hit to a hair's breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty ... At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed, they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. ~ Thomas Hardy

Gently - so have good men taught -
Gently, and without grief, the old shall glide
Into the new; the eternal flow of things,
Like a bright river of the fields of heaven,
Shall journey onward in perpetual peace. ~ William C. Bryant

I am thinking of Achilles' grief, he said. That famous, terrible, grief. Let me tell you boys something. Such grief can only be told in form. Form is everything. Without it you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry - sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry. No echo. You may have a grievance but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry. ~ Tobias Wolff

It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives. ~ Darin Strauss

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it. ~ Robin Hobb

In the months that followed my mother's death, I managed to look like a normal person. I walked the street; I answered my phone; I brushed my teeth; most of the time. But I was not OK. I was in grief. Nothing seemed important. Daily tasks were exhausting. Dishes piled in the sink, knives crusted with strawberry jam. At one point I did not wash my hair for ten days. I felt that I had abruptly arrived at a terrible, insistent truth about the impermanence of everyday. ~ Meghan O'Rourke

Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who and What He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on His part and complete submission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power to give Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less. ~ A.W. Tozer

Does that not tell you that grief is like life and that there is always somethings unknown beyond it? ~ Alexandre Dumas

Sometimes God seems to be killing us when He is actually saving us. ~ Jen Pollock Michel

Yes, you can see the bullet points here, here and here, sir; there are multiple back-slashes, of course. And that's a forward slash. I would have to call this a frenzied attack. Did anyone hear the interrobang?"
"Oh yes. Woman next door was
temporarily deafened by it. What's this?"
"Ah. You don't see many of these any
more. It's an emoticon. Hold your head this way and it appears to be winking."
"Good God! You mean – ?"
"That's the mouth."
"You mean – ?"
"That's the nose."
"Good grief Then it's – ?"
"Oh yes, sir. There's no doubt about it, sir. The Punctuation Murderer has struck again. ~ Lynne Truss

[ ... ] But then,
What is not vain, by God, in lives of men?
All is in vain! We play at blind man's buff
Until hard edges break into out path.
Man life's is error. Where, then, is relief?
In shedding tears or wrestling down my grief? ~ Jan Kochanowski

She could always walk somewhere without him. Of course this somewhere had to be somewhere "safe." She could walk to her office. But she didn't want to go to her office. She felt bored, ignored, and alienated in her office. She felt ridiculous there. She didn't belong there anymore. In all the expansive grandeur that was Harvard, there wasn't room there for a cognitive psychology professor with a broken cognitive psyche. ~ Lisa Genova

I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner. ~ W.G. Sebald

Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age. ~ Thomas Carlyle

A 2010 study by Barnaby Dixson and colleagues used an eye-tracking device to detect where a man's gaze first falls when looking at an image of a woman's body. In less than a fifth of a second, almost half the men tested looked at the woman's breasts first, while one in three looked at her waist and one in seven looked at the pubic area or thighs. Just one in sixteen men looked at the woman's face first. ~ Robert Martin

Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone. ~ Fred Rogers

I felt like I was being carried over the threshold of a sisterhood of loss. I knew I was not walking alone, and that eventually I would bob back up to the surface of the deep, because the women around me showed me what healing looks like. ~ Anna White

God will have the body partake with the soul-as in matters of grief, so in matters of joy; the lanthorn shines in the light of the candle within. ~ Richard Sibbes

The memories we have for those who left are our ultimate consolation. ~ Anoir Ou-Chad

Grief is paradoxical: you know you must let go, and yet letting go cannot happen all at once. The literature of mourning enacts that dilemma; its solace lies in the ritual of remembering the dead and then saying, There is no solace, and also, This has been going on a long time. ~ Meghan O'Rourke

I never trust anyone", Alecto told Mandy as wisps of smoke drifted from his cigarette. "Treachery is the unfortunate result of any friendships I've ever had. I don't need friends anyway, what I want is to be left alone to carry out my work ... it's a dangerous world and we're just on borrowed time, all of us ... even you. ~ Rebecca McNutt

I lay down on the bed clasping the pictures and buried my face in the pillow in a vain attempt at silencing my sobs. But it was as if all my life's accumulated grief had finally found an outlet and was allowed to take its course. I screamed, I cried, until the grief became bearable. (174) ~ Linda Olsson

Vanua is the land and you and your clan belong to, but it's more than that. It's the people who live there now and those who have lived there before. It's the traditions they've had and the songs they've sung. What they believed in and what they loved, the togetherness and the memories. The joy over babies who are born and the grief over those who have died. ~ Anne Ostby

A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That's how awful the loss is. ~ Jay Neugeboren

Ela reached out for Grego. He refused to go to her. Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for. Grego turned in Ender's relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically. Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly. "How could he show his grief to you, when he thought you hated him?" "We never hated Grego," said Olhado. "I should have known," said Miro. "I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me . . ." "Don't blame yourself," said Ender. "It's the kind of thing that only a stranger can see." He heard Jane whispering in his ear. "You never cease to amaze me, Andrew, the way you turn people into plasma. ~ Orson Scott Card

When we put his kippah into the museum, everyone was talking about how much money it was worth and the embroidery by some famous artist and how it was a national relic, and all this -- but I was just thinking of Shabbat, and seders, and -- and it didn't mean any of those things to me. It meant lighting candles. It meant he'd hid the afikomen in the palace for me and joking with his advisors as he waited around for me to find it so he could give me a new book. National treasure? I--' She blinked away new tears, but this time the look on her face was one of indignation. ~ Shira Glassman

Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate. ~ Horace Greeley

I'm glad mushrooms are against the law, because I took them one time, and you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours going, "My God! I love everything." Yeah, now if that isn't a hazard to our country ... how are we gonna justify arms dealing when we realize that we're all one? ~ Bill Hicks

Nothing has changed. It's still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much.
But how would it be if that feeling was gone?
I would not want that to happen.
I told the shrink: it would not make me happy at all not to miss him anymore. ~ Sigrid Nunez

The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone's story is the biggest in their own mind." - Laylla Jonson ~ L.B. Malpass

You have changed but that is okay. Life is not static, why should you be? ~ Samantha Tamburello

is this what it is to be a mother who has to carry the weight of having to protect her children in a world that is conspiring to kill them? Are you forced to exist within a terrible trinity of emotion: rage, grief of guilt? What of the joy and the peace that loving a child brings? What of pride and of hope? Could it really be true that my mother has been given no door number four or five or six or even seven to walk through in order to know the wholeness of motherhood? Is she one in a long line of Black mothers limited to survival mode or grief? ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

the word shari'ah literally means 'a path that leads to water.' Even the dire warnings that appear in the Qur'an are essentially nothing but the protective words of a Friend who doesn't want to see us lose our way and come to grief. ~ Charles Upton

Everything you experience is a blessing and pushes you toward realizing your true self. ~ Vivian Amis

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,
To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased
On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds. ~ Wilfred Owen

To a Familiar Genius Flying By

Reveal yourself, anonymous enchanter!
What heaven hastens you to me?
Why draw me to that promised land again
That I gave up so long ago?

Was it not you who in my youth
Enchanted me with such sweet dreams,
Did you not whisper, long ago,
Dear hopes of a guests ethereal?

Was it not you through whom all lived
In golden days, in happy lands
Of fragrant meadows, waters bright,
Where days were merry ?neath clear skies?

Was it not you who breathed into my vernal breast
Some melancholy mysteries
Tormenting it with keen desire
Exciting it to anxious joy?

Was it not you who bore my soul aloft
Upon the inspiration of your sacred verse,
Who flamed before me like a holy vision,
Initiating me into life's beauty?

In hours lost, hours of secret grief,
Did you not always murmur to my heart,
With happy comfort soothe it
And nurture it with quiet hope?

Did not my soul forever heed you
In all the purest moments of my life
When'ere it glimpsed fate's sacred essence
With only God to witness it?

What news bring you, O, my enchantress?
Or will you once more call in dreams
Awaken futile thoughts of old,
Whisper of joy and then fall silent?

O spirit, bide with me awhile;
O, faithful friend, haste not away;
Stay, please become my earthly life,
Vasily Zhukovsky