Quotes by Rosamund Lupton

...grief is loved turned into an eternal missing. ...It cant be contained in hours or days or minutes.

Shed been cross so much of the time and often about small things. Looking back at herself, she thought that her crossness was like a shapeless overcoat, covering loneliness, and it wasnt the old loneliness shed felt after her mother died, or even an adult version of it, but something different and more punishing.

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

And imagine acquiring a new language and only learning the words to describe a wonderful world, refusing to know the words for a bleak one and in doing so linguistically shaping the world that you inhabit.

But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our childrens lives.

I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.

For years I had a fantasy of a happy-ever-after ending. The first night I spent at the university my fantasy ended, because I thought a happy-ever-after was pointless. Because with my father I didnt want to hope for a happy ending but to have had a happy beginning. I wanted to have been looked after by Daddy in childhood, not finding resolution with my father as an adult.

But, astonishingly, Im not broken. Im not destroyed. Terrified witless, shaking, retching with fear, yes. But no longer insecure. Because during my search for how you died, I somehow found myself to be a different person. ... Living my life. And it wouldnt be my grief for you that toppled the mountain, but love.

However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...

I dont believe outstandingly beautiful and charismatic women create obsession in what would otherwise be normal men, but rather they attract the weirdos and the stalkers; flames in the darkness that these disturbing people inhabit, unwittingly drawing them closer until they extinguish the very flame they were drawn to.

“Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.”

“When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesnt return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...”

“For a moment amongst the crowd, I saw you. Ive since found out its common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one amongst strangers; something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you.”

“Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you.”

“Grief is love turned into an eternal missing”

“When someone dies they can be any age you remember cant they she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt Id got her in the Woolworths and a policemans helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didnt even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times shes thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter.”

“I remembered back to leos burial and holding your hand. I was eleven and you were six, your hand soft and small in mine. As the vicar said in sure and certain hope of the resurrection of eternal life you turned to me, I dont want sure and certain hope I want sure and certain Bee.”