When I was a teenager in Boston, a man on the subway handed me a card printed with tiny pictures of hands spelling out the alphabet in sign language. I AM DEAF, said the card. You were supposed to give the man some money in exchange. I have thought of that card ever since, during difficult times, mine or someone else's; surely when tragedy has struck you dumb, you should be given a stack of cards that explain it for you. When Pudding died, I wanted my stack. I still want it. My first child was stillborn, it would say on the front. It remains the hardest thing for me to explain, even now, or maybe I mean especially now - now that his death feels like a non sequitur. My first child was stillborn. I want people to know but I don't want to say it aloud. People don't like to hear it but I think they might not mind reading it on a card. Elizabeth McCracken
Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it's over, you feel like you don't have any bones left to hold you up.
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Sarah Ockler
There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.
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Dalai Lama Xiv
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
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George Bernard Shaw
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
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Horace Walpole
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
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Jean Racine
More Quotes By Elizabeth McCracken
Can I tell you something? It wasn't so bad. Not so bad at all right then, me scowling at the dirt, James in his bed, the way it always always was. Look, if that's all that happened, if his dying just meant that I would...
Books remember all the things you cannot contain.
The idea of a library full of books, the books full of knowledge, fills me with fear and love and courage and endless wonder.
Books are a bad family - there are those you love, and those you are indifferent to; idiots and mad cousins who you would banish except others enjoy their company; wrongheaded but fascinating eccentrics and dreamy geniuses; orphaned grandchildren; and endless brothers-in-law simply taking up...
Library books were, I suddenly realized, promiscuous, ready to lie down in the arms of anyone who asked. Not like bookstore books, which married their purchasers, or were brokered for marriages to others.
