Quote

My daughter, Grace, was not killed by a gun. She died suddenly at age 5 from a virulent form of strep. As I stood stunned in a church at her memorial, one of the hardest things I heard someone say was, 'I'm going to go home and hug my child a little tighter.' 'Well, good for you,' I thought. 'I'm going to go home and scream.'

Ann Hood

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Ann Hood
Age: 67
Born: 1956
Born: December 9
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
West Warwick
Rhode Island
Stunned
Well
Mother
Hardest
Memorial
Children
Form
Daughter
Hug
Going
Someone
Died
Good
Thought
Grace
Scream
Things
Home
Heard
Stood
Littles
Child
Killed
Virulent
Little
Age
Gun
Tighter
Wells
Church
Suddenly

More quotes by Ann Hood

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When I was seven years old, I fell in love with a series published by Bobbs-Merrill called 'The Childhood of Famous Americans.' In it, historical figures like Clara Barton, Nancy Hanks, Elias Howe, Patrick Henry, and dozens more came to life for me as children.
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Time doesn't heal, I had learned, it just keeps moving. And it takes us with it.
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My cousins and I used to play Beatle wives. We all wanted to be married to Paul, but John was O.K. too. None of us wanted Ringo. Or even worse, George.
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I am the woman with the cool vintage glasses... I am the proud wife beside her husband... I am the writer who has written a new novel.
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The only language she could speak was grief. How could he not know that? Instead, she said, I love you. She did. She loved him. But even that didn't feel like anything anymore.
Ann Hood
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Don't waste your one beautiful life.
Ann Hood
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I learned to knit in 2002, six months after my 5-year-old daughter, Grace, died suddenly from a virulent form of strep. I was unable to read or write, and friends suggested I take up knitting almost immediately I fell under its spell.
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No mother should lose her child.
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A sibling is the lens through which you see your childhood.
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In Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline seamlessly knits together the past and present of two women, one young and one old. Kline reminds us that we never really lose anyone or anything or – perhaps most importantly – ourselves.
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No one can write like Cheryl Strayed.
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We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She took no suggestions or advice. Halloween costumes were her territory. She was the brain behind my brothers winning girl costume, stuffing her own bra with newspapers for him to wear under a cashmere sweater and smearing red lipstick on his lips.
Ann Hood
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Even now, there are still days so beautiful, I almost believe in God.
Ann Hood
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In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family - my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.
Ann Hood
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I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner.
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Grief doesn't have a plot. It isn't smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.
Ann Hood
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love is reliable. infatuation is temporary.
Ann Hood
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I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.
Ann Hood
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I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer-I just was one.
Ann Hood