Clergyman's

“Everything that falls upon the eye is an apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings. The nerves & brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away…so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable…Why must we be left, the survivors picking among flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe had made notable?…It seemed to me that what perished need not also be lost.”
— Marilynn Robinson in Housekeeping

“The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you’re standing outside. You’ll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you’ve been out there for awhile, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you’re getting colder and colder, as the body heat you brought outside with you seeps out of your skin. Instead of getting used to it, you get weaker the longer you endure it.”
— Rob Sheffield

“All the tears in the world can’t bring back the dead or wash away your fears and grief. I want you to put up your chin and tell yourself you are strong. And if you begin to weaken, hold on to me. That’s what I am here for.”
— Cynthia Wright