Demon Copperhead

What we actually do with grief, since time doesn't shrink it.

People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry · Fredrik Backman

What a child sees in a snow globe, and what her father answers.

Inside the snow globe on my father’s desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world.

The Lovely Bones · Alice Sebold

Grief has a shape, and your tongue keeps finding it.

Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.

Because of Winn-Dixie · Kate DiCamillo