Nothing but these two thoughts. Yes, Leon Wieseltier once wrote that “displaced and unglossed quotations […] bristle smugly with implications”, but maybe this time it’s different. I don’t feel they are displaced.
I.
“Nature is very exact in the matter. Grief hurts just as much as it is worth.”
(A friend of Julian Barnes’, via Zadie Smith)
II.
The first and only principle of ethics of mourning: the accuser [of the mourner] is always wrong.
(Based on Adorno’s Law of Sexual Ethics)
And there you have it. That’s really all there is to it, and of course it is very hard. But that’s what being human is.