“সময় শোকের চেয়ে বলশালী। শোক তীরভূমি, সময় জাহ্নবী। সময় শোকের ওপর পলি ফেলে আর পলি ফেলে। তারপর একদিন প্রকৃতির অমোঘনিয়ম অনুযায়ী, সময়ের পলিতে চাপা পড়া শোকের ওপর ছোট ছোট অঙ্কুরের আঙুল বেরোয়।অঙ্কুর। আশার-দুঃখের-চিন্তার-বিদ্বেষের। আঙুলগুলো ওপরে ওঠে, আকাশ খামচায়।সময় সব পারে।”

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother’s death.Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it? People die every day and the world goes on like nothing happened. But when it’s a person you love, you think everyone should stop and take notice. That they ought to cry and light candles and tell you that you’re not alone.”

“The mourning process can feel like going through a carwash without a car.”

“I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus’s parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.”

“I am always saddened by the death of a good person. It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges. I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased than to live this way.”

“O weep for Adonis – He is dead.” “Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep – he hath wakened from the dream of life”

“I remembered that once, as a child, I was filled with wonder, that I had marveled at tri-folded science projects, encyclopedias, and road atlases. I left much of that wonder somewhere back in Baltimore. Now I had the privilege of welcoming it back like a long-lost friend, though our reunion was laced with grief; I mourned over all the years that were lost. The mourning continues. Even today, from time to time, I find myself on beaches watching six-year-olds learn to surf, or at colleges listening to sophomores slip from English to Italian, or at cafés seeing young poets flip though “The Waste Land,” or listening to the radio where economists explain economic things that I could’ve explored in my lost years, mourning, hoping that I and all my wonder, my long-lost friend, have not yet run out of time, though I know that we all run out of time, and some of us run out of it faster.”

“I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.”

“The family exists for many reasons, but its most basic function may be to draw together after a member dies.”

“Music, When Soft Voices DieMusic, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap’d for the belovèd’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.”

“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”

“We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.”

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.They’re right. It does.However much you beg it to stop.It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…All trying not to think about what’s waiting at the bottom.Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other’s arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.And then the world turns…And somebody falls off…And oh God it’s such a long way down.Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…Receding in our memories until they’re no longer visible.We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.Trying to measure how far we have to fall.No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.”Time’s a great healer.””At least it was quick.””The world keeps turning.”Oh Alec—Alec’s dead.”

“Farewell is said by the living, in life, every day. It is said with love and friendship, with the affirmation that the memories are lasting if the flesh is not.”