Home / Authors / Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg Quotes

Author

Browse famous quotes by Laura van den Berg.

Filter quotes by topic

All Death Life Change Loss Grief Florida Grieving Mourning Children Marriage Pain Relationships Books Danger Empathy Fear Illness Isolation Pandemic Past

Famous Laura van den Berg Quotes

“Her son survived the sickness, then dove off the Golden Gate Bridge. He left a note telling her he couldn't trust the world anymore.... "When could we ever?" she says.”

World Death Trust Suicide

Book:Find Me

Source: Find Me

“Ever wanted to test your own level of invisibility? Write out your obituary and see how many people you are survived by.”

Death Family Friends Isolation Survivors Invisibility Obituaries

Book:Find Me

Source: Find Me

“What exactly were the rights of the dying? Were they really so boundless?”

Death Rights Dying

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“Whenever I had confessed my worries, she told me that if you can keep brushing against death, little by little, fear will become a memory and you'll be able to face anything.”

Death Fear Bravery Worries

Book:What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

Source: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

“I've lost the desire to hold onto that last physical artifact of the life I once had, as though I was buried and re-emerged as a person who doesn't believe in anything except the way existence rages on, furiously unconscious of when one life ends and another begins.”

Life Death Belief Change Existence

Book:What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

Source: What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

“Behind every death lay a set of questions. To move on was to agree to not disturb these questions, to let them settle with the body under the earth. Yet some questions so thoroughly dismantled the terms of your own life, turning away was gravitationally impossible. So she would not be moving on. She would keep disturbing and disturbing. She imagined herself standing over a grave with a shovel and hacking away at the soil.”

Life Death Relationships Loss Grief Moving On Grieving Questions

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“She did not know how to grieve in the context of her life.”

Life Death Loss Grief Grieving Mourning

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“My point here is that the grieving are very dangerous, Richard said. They are like injured animals with fearsome claws, bloodied and pushed into a corner. Okay, said Clare. They are deranged, he continued. They shouldn't be let out of the house. Immediately after the funeral some sort of waiting period should be instituted, a period of confinement. It is a matter of public safety.”

Death Loss Grief Danger Safety Grieving Mourning

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“Death could make a person feel righteous in a way they had no right to be. Nothing in the world was less personal and nothing felt more like a poison arrow sent straight for your heart.”

Death Loss Grief Grieving Self Righteousness

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“It was brutal, the mortality contract. It came for everyone and no one was prepared.”

Death Loss Grief Grieving Mourning Mortality

Book:The Third Hotel

Source: The Third Hotel

“The five scientists from the Brazilian station always sat at their own table, isolated by their tragedy, which I understood. After my parents died, it took me months before I could carry on a conversation with someone who had not known them, who expected me to be young and sparkling and untouched by grief.”

Death Loss Grief Tragedy Mourning Isolation Death Of A Parent

Book:The Isle of Youth: Stories

Source: The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Often children's book illustrators were assumed to have kind and whimsical natures--a foolish expectation, for all the best children's literature, if anyone has been paying attention, hinges on betrayal, the heartlessness of nature, death.”

Children Death Nature Betrayal Children S Books Kids Books Illustrators Kid Lit Children S Book Illustrators

Book:I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

Source: I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

About the Author

Known for: Author
Quotes: 68

Books & Sources

State of ParadiseRelated source material

I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: StoriesRelated source material

The Third HotelRelated source material

What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves UsRelated source material

Find MeRelated source material

The Isle of Youth: StoriesRelated source material

There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good NightsRelated source material