Latest Meghan O'Rourke Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Pain, Sibling, Grief

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• A mother is the portal by which you enter the world.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Mother, World, Portal

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• 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.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Grief, Perspective, Sorrow

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Fate, Thinking, Ideas

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• 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.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Spiritual, Grief, Reality

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• After all dying is one of the most profound and difficult experiences we have.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Profound, Dying, Difficult Experiences

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Stress, Funeral, Cost

  Source: www.newyorker.com

• For sure, the funeral industry seems intensely cynical to me and I don't think it is HELPING people mourn.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Thinking, People, Cynical

  Source: www.newyorker.com

• There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Loss, Past, Self

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Loss, Thinking, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone." I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Mother, Believe, Hands

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Struggle, Loss, Doe

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• Many researchers say the dominant emotion experienced after loss is yearning or searching. And while you might feel more anger early on, it's accompanied by a whole host of other feelings.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Loss, Feelings, Might

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• 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.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Grief, People, Different

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• 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.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Dream, Grief, Writing

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• 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.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Grief, Thinking, Risk

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• Many grievers experience intense yearning or longing after a death - more than they experience, say, denial.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Denial, Longing, Intense

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.

• There is no single way of grieving. But research suggests that there are some broad similarities among grievers.

  Meghan O'Rourke

  Grieving, Research, Way

  "Ask the Author Live: Meghan O'Rourke on Grief". Live chat, www.newyorker.com. March 2, 2011.