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Quote by Allison Moorer

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Blood: A Memoir

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Author

Allison Moorer
Allison Moorer

Allison Moorer is a renowned American singer, born on June 21, 1972. She is known for her distinctive voice and emotional delivery, making a mark in both country and pop music. more

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“When I think of him now, I see him in a way I couldn’t as a child. I see what a big brain he had. But I’ve lost the awe I had for him then. I held him simultaneously in awe and contempt when I was a girl. It was confusing and made me conflicted, just like he was. My awe has since turned to sympathy, even empathy sometimes, as I navigate the world as an adult and try to find my place in it. He always seemed to be trying to find his place in it. Even having lost the weird veneration that clashed with my disdain and hurt, I grieve for him. I grieve for what he, and we, could’ve been.”

LossGrief
Book:Blood: A Memoir
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“A memory unearthed itself: the way his wife had looked in the weeks following the news, the way she looked at things but never really saw them. The way she always seemed to be staring at something he couldn’t make out. The broken-down pits of her eyes, high on painkillers, opiates, staring at the wall, silent tears streaking drug-slacked cheeks. Maybe that had finished them off even before the divorce papers. Neither of them could live with what happened and neither wanted to watch the other one die so slowly.”

LossGriefFailureAddictionMourningGrief And LossCoping
Book:The War Beneath
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“The story always starts in the same way when people ask me the simple, yet most difficult question to answer: “where are you from?” I often wonder why of all questions people start with this one that has become the hardest for me and countless other exiled people to answer. The question is especially hard when asked in crowded and fast-paced places, or during quick encounters which make a short answer inadequate and a long one potentially uncalled for…I thought to myself: why is it that the first thing people want to know about me is where I am from? If they only knew where I am from, they would perhaps know that where I am from—Iraq—happens to also be the deepest wound on the geography of my body and soul, and so they would tread gently on my wound by not asking that question in the first place. Is there something in my eyes, something written on my forehead, something in my looks, or some marks inscribed on my other body parts that immediately tell people that I am from a place that lost itself and lost me to exile on a cold, dark, and sad winter night? Why don’t these strangers just start with the more common and safer usual remarks about the weather being nice, dreadful, or whatever? Of all questions, “where are you from,” is the most delicate and complicated for people who have lost their home and all the things they loved.”

LossRacismImmigrationBelongingExileAlienationRefugeesRacial ProfilingOriginProfiling
Author:Louis Yako
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“I lay in bed, feeling the champagne tide retreating and leaving me beached, like some unfortunate sea creature. In its absence the Thing--heavy, black, suffocating--returned, as if it had been waiting all evening for the two of us to be alone. It slid oil-slick over my skin, filled my nostrils, pooled at the back of my throat. It whispered in my ear, stories about loss and loneliness and little orphan girls.”

LossGrief
Book:The Ten Thousand Doors of January
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“He heard a dresser drawer slide shut in the bedroom. She came out dressed all in black, as she almost always did, and carrying the three pieces of a plate that had fallen off the bed the night before; it was a light shade of blue, and sticky with pomegranate juice. He heard her dropping it into the kitchen trash can before she wandered past him into the living room. She stood in front of his sofa, running her fingers through her hair to test for dampness, her expression a little blank when he glanced up at her, and it seemed to him later that she’d been considering something, perhaps making up her mind. But then, he played the morning back so many times that the tape was ruined—later it seemed possible that she’d simply been thinking about the weather, and later still he was even willing to consider the possibility that she hadn’t stood in front of the sofa at all—had merely paused there, perhaps, for an instant that the stretched-out reel extended into a moment, a scene, and finally a major plot point. Later he was certain that the first few playbacks of that last morning were reasonably accurate, but after a few too many nights of lying awake and considering things, the quality began to erode. In retrospect the sequence of events is a little hazy, images running into each other and becoming slightly confused: she’s across the room, she’s kissing him for a third time—and why doesn’t he look up and kiss her? Her last kiss lands on his head—and putting on her shoes; does she kiss him before she puts on her shoes, or afterward? He can’t swear to it one way or the other. Later on he examined his memory for signs until every detail seemed ominous, but eventually he had to conclude that there was nothing strange about her that day. It was a morning like any other, exquisitely ordinary in every respect.”

LossMemory
Book:Last Night in Montreal
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“In either hand the hastning Angel caught Our lingring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast To the subjected Plaine; then disappeer'd. They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat, Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate With dreadful Faces throng'd and fierie Armes: Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, Through Eden took thir solitarie way.”

LossEdenAdam And EveThe WorldNew BeginningParadise LostDealing With Change
Book:Paradise lost
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