Home / Authors / Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke

Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

Poet

Meghan O'Rourke is an American poet born in 1976. Her work is known for its profound emotion and unique style, exploring themes such as love, death, and identity.

Filter quotes by topic

All Grief Mother Loss Death Thinking Way Dying Illness World Feels People Autoimmune Disease Persons Chronic Illness Different Fall Feelings Mourn Seems Stories

Famous Meghan O'Rourke Quotes

“I think: it's the holidays. There are parties. I'm young. I've spent the past two years going to oncologists. I'm going to put on my party shoes. And I do go to one party, and I leave when people start to dance around a pole. Later I start dating the man whose party it was, and he remembers being glad I came, and casually tells me how he flirted his head off that night. I'm not in your country, I think. I haven't lived in your country for a while.”

Death Grief Dying Survivors Families

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily, La Rochefoucauld wrote.”

Death Fear Grief Dying

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“So much of dealing with a disease is waiting. Waiting for appointments, for tests, for "procedures." And waiting, more broadly, for it--for the thing itself, for the other shoe to drop. Except in the waiting you keep forgetting that "it" will really happen--it's more like a threat, an anxiety: Will my love love me forever?”

Death Waiting Loss Grief Patience Illness

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“But now it seemed to me that Hamlet was moody and irascible in no small part because he is grieving: his father has just died. He is radically dislocated, stumbling through the days while the rest of the world acts as if nothing important has changed.”

Death Loss Grief Grieving Shakespeare Hamlet

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you most.”

Life Death Change Loss Grief

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“Grief is paradoxical: you know you must let go, and yet letting go cannot happen all at once. The literature of mourning enacts that dilemma; its solace lies in the ritual of remembering the dead and then saying, There is no solace, and also, This has been going on a long time.”

Death Literature Loss Grief Dying Books Grieving Solace

Book:The Long Goodbye

Source: The Long Goodbye

“Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes.”

Firsts Eye Memories Grief Dog Tears Moon Notes Wave Sunlight Sleepers Jingles Dog Food Saboteurs

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“To mourn is to wonder at the strangeness that grief is not written all over your face in bruised hieroglyphics. And it's also to feel, quite powerfully, that you're not allowed to descend into the deepest fathom of your grief - that to do so would be taboo somehow.”

Feels Would Be Faces Grief Wonder Written Over You Your Face Taboo Mourn Strangeness Fathom Bruised Hieroglyphics

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Grief is characterized much more by waves of feeling that lessen and reoccur, it's less like stages and more like different states of feeling.”

Different States Feelings Grief Stage Wave

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Television has never known what to do with grief, which resists narrative: the dramas of grief are largely internal - for the bereaved, it is a chaotic, intense, episodic period, but the chaos is by and large subterranean, and easily appears static to the friendly onlooker who has absorbed the fact of loss and moved on.”

Facts Loss Grief Known Television Periods Drama Moved Chaos Intense Narrative Internals Friendly Chaotic Static Moved On

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal - and of course having a sense of the contours of grief is, I think, truly useful, one has to remember it's not a science, it's an individual reckoning, which science is just trying to help us describe.”

Thinking Trying Kind Helping Seems Remember Certain Courses Individual Grief Risk Normal Research Difficulty Abnormal Reckoning

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“While I did a lot of research, I ended up feeling that the best way to write about grief was to describe it from the inside out - the show the strange intensities that come along with it, the peculiar thoughts, the longing for that past - all the strange moments of thinking you glimpse the dead person on the street, or in your dreams.”

Thinking Way Writing Persons Moments Shows Feelings Dream Past Grief Streets Strange Research Longing Best Way Your Dreams Intensity Peculiar Glimpse

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I have seen that grief can be very different for different people. While the range of emotions experienced is similar, the way we deal with those emotions isn't, necessarily.”

People Way Different Deals Grief Emotion Range Different Peoples Range Of Emotions

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.”

Thinking World Wells Reality Spiritual Process Grief Profound Absence Metaphysical Pillars Reckoning Profound Spiritual Reality Of Death

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“One of the things about grief is that it can bring a deeper perspective into your life; in the end, it has, for me, though it's also brought sorrow.”

Ends Grief Perspective Sorrow Deeper

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.”

Pain Parent Grief Blessing Painful Sibling

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.”

Firsts Facts Would Be Grief Sadness Worst Prepared Unpredictable Flu Linear

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“But there is a discomfort that surrounds grief. It makes even the most well-intentioned people unsure of what to say. And so many of the freshly bereaved end up feeling even more alone.”

People Wells Ends Feelings Grief Surround Discomfort Unsure

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.”

Feels Believe I Believe Grief Sadness Mines Connections Importance Individuality I Believe In Midst

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.”

Grief Persona Disruption

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.”

States Grief Pieces Subjects Demand Extremes Complexity Altered Altered States

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.”

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.”

Grief Description Describing

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.”

Ifs Grief Conditions Universal Transactions

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

“Much of Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about how the inner translates into the outer, the sense that one is expected to perform grief palatably. (If you don’t seem sad, people worry; but if you are grief-stricken, people flinch away from your pain.)”

People Ifs Kind Seems Pain Differences Grief Worry Expected Uncertainty Translate Precise Seeming

Book:The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

Source: The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

About the Author

Born: 1976
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 86

Related Topics

Grief Mother Loss Death Thinking Way Dying Illness World Feels People Autoimmune Disease Persons Chronic Illness Different Fall Feelings Mourn Seems Stories

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Long Goodbye: A MemoirRelated source material

The Long GoodbyeRelated source material

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic IllnessRelated source material

Similar Authors

Christian McEwenBrowse related quotes
Thomas Golden, Jr.Browse related quotes
Gail CaldwellBrowse related quotes
Mary Jo BangBrowse related quotes
Jeremy PageBrowse related quotes
Judy TatelbaumBrowse related quotes
Candy LightnerBrowse related quotes
Joseph M. ScrivenBrowse related quotes
Jeanie (Jenny) CameronBrowse related quotes
Anne GrantBrowse related quotes