Their unhappiness was one of the constants of my earliest years, a high, unceasing buzz just beyond hearing.
All the distress signals . . . people who are not sighing but crying, not dangling but strangling, not holding up but holding on, not asking but pleading . . .
In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch.
Her tears were blinding her, the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for.
But his going had created a gap so huge she despaired of ever filling it.
My name is Desdemona. The word, Desdemona, means misery. It means ill fated. It means doomed.
Boys' griefs are not so grievous as our yearning,
Boys have no sadness sadder than our hope.
There is nothing pretty about grief, Rain, nor any way your witnessing mine could alleviate it.
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange.
I know you grieve by running away. By pretending you were never there.
Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.