A Grief Observed
“At first I was very afraid of going to places where H. and I had been happy – our favourite pub, our favourite wood. But I decided to do it at once – like sending a pilot up again as soon as possible after he’s had a crash. Unexpectedly, it makes no difference. Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It’s not local at all. I suppose if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn’t notice it much more in any one food than another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. I is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
from A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
The Kite Runner
“Baba wet his hair and combed it back. I helped him in a clean white shirt and knotted his tie for him, noting the two inches of empty space between the collar button and Baba’s neck. I thought of all the empty spaces Baba would leave behind when he was gone, and I made myself think of something else.”
from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini pg. 162
The Kite Runner
“The blast echoes through the street of my father’s house. Hassan slumps to the asphalt, his life of unrequited loyalty drifting from him like the windblown kites he used to chase.”
from The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini pg. 219
The Thirteenth Tale
“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some their is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like lies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield pgs. 20-21
