Orson Scott Card Quotes on Loss
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You'll keep looking around for something, something you were looking for, but you can't find it, and you can't remember what it was.
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For now that they could not be together, they must indefinitely be apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; for the moment we are not together, [he] is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other.
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Is it possible she had lost her soul inside his?
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She probably knew this, intellectually. But like all other human beings, she did not always act accordingly to her understanding. She had lost too many of the people that she loved; when she felt one more of them slipping away, her response was emotional, not intellectual. [he] had come into her life as a healer, a protector. It was his job to keep her from being afraid, and now she was afraid, and she was angry at him for having failed her.
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How I wish you could have kept on living a life of joy. But no one can. Language comes to us, and with it lies and threats, cruelty and disappointment. You walk, and those steps lead you outside the shelter of your home. To keep the joy of childhood you would have to die as a child, or live as one, never becoming a man, never growing. So I can grieve for the lost child, and yet not regret the good man braced with pain and riven with guilt, who yet was kind to me and many others, and whom I loved, and whom I also almost knew. Almost, almost knew
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There's no meaning of life if I've lost you.
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You ready to command a fleet? I don't know. It depends on whether they want to win. Here's the thing, Bean. Soldiers don't like to lose And that is why losing is a much more powerful teacher than winning.
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There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content. to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.
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I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way
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Everything I ever felt myself to be a part of is dead
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I know how it feels to have driven all compassion out of my heart and laugh at the pain of someone else
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He'd find out soon enough what losing everything could mean
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You spend you're whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet
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Some memories don't fade, some physical memories are forever. The feel of your fathers hand, the sound of your mothers voice. Only, father's hand was smaller now. No, Ivan's was larger, but to him, it was his father who had shrunk, who no longer had the power of the giant, of the god, to enfold him and keep him safe.
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She still felt, or at least feared, that Ivan was a good man and she had lost a prize. But if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?
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And if it tortures you to know that another man was with her in her life, console yourself with this: he only knew her but the once
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Rage at the death of his daughter and all the things that had gone wrong and the people who had screwed up. He needed to kill somebody, to tear them apart, only there wasn't anybody to kill.
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Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind
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If I don't do anything that also ruins lives Beginning with your own Maybe Because you need children. Don't you? I don't know if I could ever do that again. Now that I know what it does to you when you lose one. Is it worse than losing a parent? Yes Worse than losing yourself? I've never lost myself
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I wasn't a believer' I was raised that way, but when [she] died I decided that was all the proof I needed that god didn't exist or if he did he didn't care about us at all
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I found her and then I lost her
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Death isn't the worst thing in the world Yes it is, you lose everything You keep your memories, in the end that's all we have
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He lived in one frozen, perfect moment - the moment when his heart was so full of love - no, not love. The moment when he decided, without love, that it would be better for his life, such as it was, to end than to have to watch [her] life end. It's is a moment that can be lived with for eternity
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Then [she] wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again
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They were gnawed within by the grief of knowing that this greatest gift of all gifts was forever out of their reach.
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That when Bant left it was the end of the world for Josif, because when he attached to somebody he didn't know how to let go
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He is so young He was never young
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I'm losing Savanna That's good. No one should own someone else
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Deep inside himself, in a place he didn't often go, where he kept the things he didn't like to think about but dared not forget, he knew that [she] was still alive somewhere, and somehow she was watching what he did, or at least looking in on him from time to time
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So there he was with... No career, and, to put it candidly, no life. It was as if he had been running a long, long race and finally realized that there was nobody else in it with him, he had crossed the finish line years ago and didn't notice it because not a soul was there to cheek for him and clap him on the back and say 'Good run... Good run!' Or come to think of it, maybe they were there, only [he] himself didn't care what they thought of him and so he sloughed off their praise and their friendship because he was waiting for the one voice he'd never hear again.
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He felt sick with the sense of loss. What have I been doing all these years? How stupid can a reasonably bright guy be?
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He felt something touch him, warm and deep, like a candle burst inside his heart. Like a soft breath of joy that swept through him, and he looked up to ask her what it was she did to him, how she could give him such a gift of life. But she was gone.
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A man who has loved the perfect lover isn't likely to find a substitute very soon
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I never knew I love father till he lay there at the brink of death. Perhaps I never did love him, until he was nearly gone. It seemed a very powerful thought, until it occurred to him that justice probably put it into his mind
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... if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? -Enchantment