Figuring out what to say to someone who is grieving isn't always easy.
By Melissa Moscoso — Written on Sep 10, 2020
When someone experiences the death of a sister, it’s only natural to want to comfort them. It’s also natural to not know where to start, but these loss of a sister quotes will help you send your condolences and comfort someone who needs you during this difficult time in their life.
Each person’s grieving process is influenced by their coping mechanisms as well as the relationship they are mourning. But don’t let grief scare you away from being there for your friend. You may not know their grief, but you know your friend.
If you want to be there for your friend, prioritize their needs first. Give your actions care but don’t overthink this. You know them. You know whether to send flowers, show up in person, or give them space. Let them know you’re there if they need you.
Below are 50 comforting quotes about the loss of a sister and grief.
Studies have shown that reading promotes empathy and understanding. You may never know what your friend is going through, but you can help comfort them by letting them with quotes from people who've also been through it. The quotes come from famous authors like Jodi Picoult, Jandy Nelson, and Joan Didion ― all who have written profound, intricate novels about experiencing death.
1. “A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.” ―Marion C. Garretty
2. “See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded.” ―Jodi Picoult
3. “I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.” ―Rachel Joyce
4. “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” ―Vicki Harrison
5. “Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.” ―John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
6. “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ―J.R.R Tolkien
7. “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” ―Leo Tolstoy
8. “Sisterhood transcends life.” ―Michele Meleen
9. “There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass ― if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.” ―Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
10. “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” ―Sarah Dessen
11. “A sister makes your life complete no matter where she is.” ―Michele Meleen
12. “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.” ―Elizabeth Gilbert
13. “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o―er wrought heart and bids it break.” ―William Shakespeare
14. “The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?” ―Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
15. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” ―Elizabeth Kubler
16. “Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.” Arthur Golden
17. “When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.” ― Pat Schweibert, Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
18. “But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.” ― Ranata Suzuki
19. “And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend.” ―Antoine de Saint―Exupéry, The Little Prince
20. “She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.” ― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
21. “Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.” ―Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Giant
22. “You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton
23. “we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
24. “Words are like nets ― we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.” ―Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
25. “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ―Rumi
26. “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.” ― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
27. “It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding.” ―Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
28. “Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” ―José N. Harris, MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love
29. “In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.” ―Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
30. “So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
31. “Memories fade over time, but my sister isn't a memory. She's a part of me.” ―Michele Meleen
32. “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. ” ― Joan Didion
33. “My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.” ―Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere
34. “The only way to end grief was to go through it.” ― Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest
35. "Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like, 'Why do people die?' and 'Why is this happening to me?' Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.” ― Caitlin Doughty, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
36. “Grieving doesn't make you imperfect. It makes you human.” ― Sarah Dessen
37. “I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.” ― Joan Didion
38. “You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.” ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
39. “Losing a sister is like losing your keys ― you always find them in unexpected places if you look hard enough.”―Michele Meleen
40. “What made something precious? Losing it and finding it.” ― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
41. “Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.” ― Patti Smith, Just Kids
42. “Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking.” ―Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
43. "I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.” ―Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart
44. “Stop punishing yourself for being someone with a heart. You cannot protect yourself from suffering. To live is to grieve. You are not protecting yourself by shutting yourself off from the world. You are limiting yourself.” ― Leigh Bardugo, King of Scars
45. “Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief.” ―Alison Bechdel
46. “The years I had with my sister will always be more memorable than the years she's been gone.” ―Michele Meleen
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Melissa Moscoso is a writer who covers astrology, love, and pop culture.