Giovanni's Room quotes about grief

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again.

Much has been written of love turning to hatred, of the heart growing cold with the death of love. It is a remarkable process. It is far more terrible than anything I have ever read about it, more terrible than anything I will ever be able to say.

With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

I thought only, One day I’ll weep for this. One of these days I’ll start to cry.

I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.

It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni’s room.

To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it.

And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder.

But it was not the same, something was gone; the astonishment, the power, and the joy were gone, the peace was gone.

Beneath the joy, of course, was anguish and beneath the amazement was fear; but they did not work themselves to the beginning until our high beginning was aloes on our tongues.

For this was not a matter of habit or circumstances or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.

This was not the garbage of Paris, which would have been anonymous: this was Giovanni’s regurgitated life.