Gail Caldwell Quotes

• I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.

  Gail Caldwell

  Recovery, Loss, Different

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.182, Random House

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• Old dogs can be a regal sight. Their exuberance settles over the years into a seasoned nobility, their routines become as locked into yours as the quietest and kindest of marriages.

  Gail Caldwell

  Dog, Sight, Years

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.177, Random House

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• What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.

  Gail Caldwell

  Missing Someone, Grief, Simple

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.9, Random House

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• Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.

  Gail Caldwell

  Heart, Amputation, Endure

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.163, Random House

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• Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

  Gail Caldwell

  Sadness, Feeling Sad, Assuming

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.180, Random House

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• What do you do when the story changes in midlife? When a tale you have told yourself turns out to be a little untrue, just enough to throw the world off-kilter? It’s like leaving the train at the wrong stop: You are still you, but in a new place, there by accident or grace, and you will need your wits about you to proceed.

  Gail Caldwell

  Grace, Leaving, Needs

  "New Life, No Instructions". Book by Gail Caldwell, wnpr.org. April 2014.

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• The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

  Gail Caldwell

  Grief, Sadness, Loss

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• memory is both the curse of grief and the eventual talisman against it; what at first seems unbearable becomes the succor that can outlast pain.

  Gail Caldwell

  Pain, Memories, Grief

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• It's taken years for me to understand that dying doesn't end the story; it transforms it. Edits, rewrites, the blur, aand epiphany of one-way dialogue. Most of us wander in and out of one another's lives until not death, but distance, does us part-- time and space and heart's weariness are the blander executioners or human connection.

  Gail Caldwell

  Distance, Taken, Heart

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• You can’t change the tale so that you turned left one day instead of right, or didn’t make the mistake that might have saved your life a day later. We don’t get those choices. The story is what got you here, and embracing its truth is what makes the outcome bearable.

  Gail Caldwell

  Mistake, Choices, One Day

  7 Copy quote

• Grief is what tells you who you are alone.

  Gail Caldwell

  Grief, Who You Are

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.3, Random House

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• The real hell of this," he told her, "is that you're going to get through it.

  Gail Caldwell

  Real, Loss, Hell

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.163, Random House

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• Hope in the beginning feels like such a violation of the loss, and yet without it we couldn't survive.

  Gail Caldwell

  Loss, Violation, Feels

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.163, Random House

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• the mother's first job is to raise a daughter strong enough to outlast her.

  Gail Caldwell

  Daughter, Mother, Strong

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• Near the end I asked him one night in the hospital corridor what he thought was happening, and he said, "Tell her everything you haven't said," and I smiled with relief. "There's nothing," I said. "I've already told her everything.

  Gail Caldwell

  Night, Relief, Ends

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• It's and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.

  Gail Caldwell

  Stories, Died

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.3, Random House

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• the territory of grief ... is both cruel and commonplace.

  Gail Caldwell

  Grief, Territory, Commonplace

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• That she was irreplaceable became a bittersweet loyalty: Her death was what I had now instead of her.

  Gail Caldwell

  Loyalty, Bittersweet, Irreplaceable

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.161, Random House

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• The Hours is in fact a lovely triumph. Cunningham honors both Mrs. Dalloway and its creator with unerring sensitivity, thanks to his modesty of intention and his sovereignly affecting prose.... With his elliptical evocation of Mrs. Dalloway, he has managed to pay great but quiet tribute -- reminding us of the gorgeous, ferocious beauty of what endures.

  Gail Caldwell

  Lovely, Honor, Triumph

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• My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

  Gail Caldwell

  Children, Reading, Ideas

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.24, Random House

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• Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare.

  Gail Caldwell

  Scratches, Fantasy, Nightmare

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• The flaw is the thing we love.

  Gail Caldwell

  Flaws

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.72, Random House

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• If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.

  Gail Caldwell

  Suffering, Shy, Spotlight

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.17, Random House

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• The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course.

  Gail Caldwell

  Grief, Crash, Courses

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.150, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.

  Gail Caldwell

  Fear, Breathing, Battle

  Gail Caldwell (2010). “Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship”, p.78, Random House

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