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Quote by Stefan Zweig

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Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories

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Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig, born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna, was an Austrian novelist, playwright, and biographer. Known for his profound psychological insights and unique narrative style, he is a significant figure in European literature at the beginning of the 20th century. more

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“Maybe that would be a good thing to do. He wasn't entirely sure, and that bothered him more than anything. How was he meant to judge right from wrong when he had never really striven to do right before? The only good thing he had known was his time with Drin, and Drin had died because of it. I'd do it again Xeras. Even knowing. I would do it all again. 'Oh, Drin, I was never worth it.' Oh, Xeras, that was never for you to say.”

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“The state of mind above which my distraction floats like fog is suddenly perfectly clear, though the right word for it is less immediately available. Grief is too sharp and immediate; maybe it’s the high pitch of the vowel sound, or the monosyllabic impact of the word, as quick a jab as knife or cut. Sadness is too ephemeral, somehow; it sounds like something that comes and goes, a response to an immediate cause which will pass in a little while as another cause arises to generate a different feeling. Mourning isn’t bad, but there’s something a little archaic about it. I think of widows keening, striking themselves- dark-swathed years, a closeting of self away from the world, turned inward toward an interior dark. Sorrow feels right , for now. Sorrow seems large and inhabitable, an interior season whose vaulted sky’s a suitable match for the gray and white tumult arched over these headlands. A sorrow is not to be gotten over or moved through in quite the way that sadness is, yet sorrow is also not as frozen and monochromatic as mourning. Sadness exists inside my sorrow, but it’s not as large as sorrow’s realm. This sorrow is capacious; there’s room inside it for the everyday, for going about the workaday stuff of life. And for loveliness, for whatever we’re to be given by the daily walk.”

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Book:Heaven's Coast: A Memoir
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“Can you remember another time when your chest felt like this?” My fingers splayed across my aching chest as I carefully pondered her question. Then I nodded vigorously as I remembered. Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked as I whispered hoarsely, “Yes, I do remember.After my husband died, it hurt like this. My chest felt full and heavy, and I thought then, Oh, this is what it feels like to have your heart break.”

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Book:Refined by Fire: A Journey of Grief and Grace
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“We would also have to say goodbye to the joy of watching this next generation soak up the massive quantities of love their grandmother would have given them, and seeing them learn that there was someone in the world who loved them as much as their parents did: a grandmother who was delighted by all their quirks and who thought they were the most amazing creatures on earth. It was an idealized view of the future-but it was the one I carried in my head, and I don't think it was far off from the one my brother and sister and father and mother had. I was learning that when you're with someone who is dying, you may need to celebrate the past, live the present, and mourn the future all at the same time.”

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“Golden bars make no less a prison than a coffin on a hill. And in caged reformation, one wanders aimless still. The rafters now a recollection of sacred suppression. How the morning dawn strikes mourning confession. Now Death yields a harvest of the living masses. We walk toward its path no earthly power surpasses.”

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