Quotes from Meghan O'Rourke


    Sorted by Popularity


    'Hamlet' is a play about a man whose grief is deemed unseemly.

    Grief | Whose | Hamlet


    This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.

    Grief | Complexity | Extreme


    A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother.

    Mother | Beginning | Beyond


    But when my mother died, I found that I did not believe that she was gone.

    Mother | Gone | Found


    'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

    Best | Grief | Rather


    My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

    Women | Talents | Theory


    My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

    Life | Knowledge | History


    Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

    Mother | Loss | Die


    I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.

    Time | Support | Lost


    It's all too easy when talking about female gymnasts to fall into the trap of infantilizing them, spending more time worrying more about female vulnerability than we do celebrating female strength.

    Strength | Time | Fall


    And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

    Death | Mother | Open


    One word I had throughout the first year and a half of my mother's death was 'unmoored.' I felt that I had no anchor, that I had no home in the world.

    Death | Home | Mother


    I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.

    Child | Irish | Religious


    I live to collect information, and I am also a perfectionist.

    Collect


    I'm not much like my mother; that role falls to my brothers, who have more of her blithe and freewheeling spirit.

    Mother | Spirit | Brothers


    Like my mother before me, I have always been a good speller.

    Good | Mother


    Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore - we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail.

    Black | Beat | Wear


    One of the ideas I've clung to most of my life is that if I just try hard enough it will work out.

    Life | Work | Ideas


    The truth is, I need to experience my mother's presence in the world around me and not just in my head.

    Truth | Experience | Mother


    Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.

    Primary


       

      Popular Topics


      Popular Authors

      Authors On The News

      A Quote from the stars