“And what of regrets? I shall live with them. I shall accept my regrets as part of my life, to be numbered among my self-inflicted wounds. But I will not endlessly gaze at them. I shall allow the memories to prod me into doing better with those still living. And I shall allow them to sharpen the vision and intensify the hope for that Great Day coming when we can all throw ourselves into each other's arms and say, "I'm sorry.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“God is not only the God of the sufferers but the God who suffers. ... It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it meant that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor. ... Instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“Faith is a footbridge that you don't know will hold you up over the chasm until you're forced to walk out onto it.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song--all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself.
We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“THE TEARS ... streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested."
-AUGUSTINE,
Confessions IX, i z”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“IT’S THE neverness that is so painful. Never again to be here with us—never to sit with us at table, never to travel with us, never to laugh with us, never to cry with us, never to embrace us as he leaves for school, never to see his brothers and sister marry. All the rest of our lives we must live without him. Only our death can stop the pain of his death. A month, a year, five years—with that I could live. But not this forever. I step outdoors into the moist moldly fragrance of an early summer morning and arm in arm with my enjoyment comes the realization that never again will he smell this. As a cloud vanishes and is gone, so he who goes down to the grave does not return, He will never come to his house again; his place will know him no more. JOB 7:9-10 One small misstep and now this endless neverness.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“But the pain of the no more outweighs the gratitude of the once was. Will it always be so? I didn’t know how much I loved him until he was gone. Is love like that?”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“IT’S so WRONG, so profoundly wrong, for a child to die before its parents. It’s hard enough to bury our parents. But that we expect. Our parents belong to our past, our children belong to our future. We do not visualize our future without them. How can I bury my son, my future, one of the next in line? He was meant to bury me!”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“A friend said, “Remember, he’s in good hands.” I was deeply moved. But that reality does not put Eric back in my hands now. That’s my grief. For that grief, what consolation can there be other than having him back?”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“When death is no longer seen as release from this miserable materiality into our rightful immateriality, when death is seen rather as the slicing off of what God declared to be, and what all of us feel to be, of great worth, then death is—well, not friend but enemy. Though I shall indeed recall that death is being overcome, my grief is that death still stalks this world and one day knifed down my Eric. Nothing fills the void of his absence. He’s not replaceable. We can’t go out and get another just like him.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
“Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help.”
― Nicholas Wolterstorff, quote from Lament for a Son
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Born place: in Bigelow, Minnesota , The United States
Born date January 21, 1932
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“He reached over, took the second cookie, and offered it to Robbins. “Here,” he said. “I saw you coveting it.” Robbins stared at the cookie, then looked around. “I can’t take that,” he said. “Sure you can,” Szilard said. “I’m not supposed to eat anything here,” Robbins said. “So what?” Szilard said. “Screw ’em. It’s a ridiculous tradition and you know it. So break it. Take the cookie.” Robbins took the cookie and stared at it glumly. “Oh, good God,” Szilard said. “Do I have to order you to eat the damn thing?” “It might help,” Robbins said. “Fine,” Szilard said. “Colonel, I’m giving you a direct order. Eat the fucking cookie.” Robbins ate it. The waiter was scandalized.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Ghost Brigades
“The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is the agent that ensures happiness for millions of ‘Insiders’.”
― Colin Wilson, quote from The Outsider
“Little of that makes for love, but it does pump desire. The woman who churned a man's blood as she leaned all alone on a fence by a country road might not expect even to catch his eye in the City. But if she is clipping quickly down the big-city street in heels, swinging her purse, or sitting on a stoop with a cool beer in her hand, dangling her shoe from the toes of her foot, the man, reacting to her posture, to soft skin on stone, the weight of the building stressing the delicate, dangling shoe, is captured. And he'd think it was the woman he wanted, and not some combination of curved stone, and a swinging, high-heeled shoe moving in and out of sunlight. He would know right away the deception, the trick of shapes and light and movement, but it wouldn't matter at all because the deception was part of it too. Anyway, he could feel his lungs going in and out. There is no air in the City but there is breath, and every morning it races through him like laughing gas brightening his eyes, his talk, and his expectations. In no time at all he forgets little pebbly creeks and apple trees so old they lay their branches along the ground and you have to reach down or stoop to pick the fruit. He forgets a sun that used to slide up like the yolk of a good country egg, thick and red-orange at the bottom of the sky, and he doesn't miss it, doesn't look up to see what happened to it or to stars made irrelevant by the light of thrilling, wasteful street lamps.
That kind of fascination, permanent and out of control, seizes children, young girls, men of every description, mothers, brides, and barfly women, and if they have their way and get to the City, they feel more like themselves, more like the people they always believed they were.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from Jazz
“His warm voice
tiptoes into the
quiet room.”
― Lisa Schroeder, quote from The Day Before
“If you have a dream, you have a responsibility to yourself and to us to make it come true. That’s the most important thing in your life. Don’t let anything stand in its way.”
― Kenneth Atchity, quote from The Messiah Matrix
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