(b. 1951– )
U.S. book critic and memoirist
Gail Caldwell
It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home (New York: Random House, 2010), 3.
Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home (New York: Random House, 2010), 180.
I had a friend who years before had lost her firstborn when he was an infant, and she told me one of the piercing consolations she received in her early grief was from a man who recognized the fierce loyalty one feels to the dead. “The real hell of this,” he told her, “is that you’re going to get through it.” Like a starfish, the heart endures its amputation.
Let’s Take the Long Way Home (New York: Random House, 2010), 163.