A Quote by Gail Caldwell

memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

Gail Caldwell

Quote Topics

Against Becomes Both Curse First Grief Memory Outlast Pain Seems T Pain Unbearable

Quote Author

Gail Caldwell
American - Critic
Born: 1951

But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift.

Sue Miller

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.

Elizabeth Gilbert

As an athlete, you learn to keep pushing through the pain until the pain eventually becomes unbearable. Even then, you are told to continue.

Katelyn Ohashi

Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

Any messages for me?" Usually I got one or two, but mostly people who wanted my help preferred to talk in person. "Yes. Hold on." She pulled out a handful of pink tickets and recited from memory, without checking the paper. "Seven forty-two a.m., Mr. Gasparian: I curse you. I curse your arms so they wither and die and fall off your body. I curse your eyeballs to explode. I curse your feet to swell until blue. I curse your spine to crack. I curse you. I curse you. I curse you.

Ilona Andrews

Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

They discovered that even in the face of pain that seems unbearable, even in the face of pain that wrings the last drop of blood out of your heart and leaves its scrimshaw tracery on the inside of your skull, life goes on. And pain grows dull, and begins to fade

Poppy Z. Brite

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Aeschylus

Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both.

Deepak Chopra

When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.

Yann Martel

Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief.

Marianne Williamson

Loss brings pain. Yes. But pain triggers memory. And memory is a kind of new birth, within each of us. And it is that new birth after long pain, that resurrection - in memory - that, to our surprise, perhaps, comforts us.

Sue Miller

Chorus: Zeus, who guided men to think who laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our pleasure we are temperate.

Aeschylus

I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, that there is no question that grief can trigger depression in vulnerable people and there is no question that depression can make grief worse.