Excerpt: An honest and raw collection of Michelle Zauner quotes from Crying in H Mart on grief and what it was like losing her mom and aunt to cancer.
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Page 27)
“False happiness [is] even worse than real sadness, because at least in that sadness there is a reality. If you are sad—but truly and sincerely sad—that sadness will enrich you. It gives you a depth, an insight. It makes you aware of life and its infinite possibilities and of the limits of the human mind, the smallness of human consciousness encountering the infinity all around, the fragile life always surrounded by death. When you are really sad you become aware of all these things. You become aware that life is not just life—it is death too.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 217)
“My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary. I can tell you with a straight face what it was like watching my mom’s hair fall out in the bathtub, or about the five weeks I spent sleeping in hospitals, but catch me at H Mart when some kid runs up double-fisting plastic sleeves of ppeongtwigi and I’ll just lose it. Those little rice-cake Frisbees were my childhood, a happier time when Mom was there and we’d crunch away on the Styrofoam-like disks after school, splitting them like packing peanuts that dissolved like sugar on our tongues.”
Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (Page 5)
“It would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 179)
“Sadness is ugly because of our rejection of it; it is not ugly in itself. Once you accept it, you will see how beautiful it is, how relaxing, how calm and quiet, how silent. It has something to give that happiness can never give. Sadness gives depth.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 167)
“Sorrow are our best educator. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 100)
“If you are in a difficult situation, a low mood, if you are afraid of other people and of yourself, if you are tormented, then tell yourself: ‘I will love everyone whom I meet in this life.’ Try to follow this rule; and you will see that everything will find its way, and everything will seem simple, and you will no longer have doubts or fears.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 202)
