I get it why they call it a heartbreak. It's this deep feeling in your chest, something inexplicable. The pain isn't sharp, or dull, the pain is tight. The pain is like a balloon, full of so much air, the rubber is stretched so tight—ready to burst. And then, the pain is fleeting.
Yes, that's right. I'm heartbroken—or at least I was, when I wrote this. God, I hope I'm over it by the time you read this. Sometimes, you need to make decisions, like breakups knowing the outcome will be hard. But you'll get through it. We all do.
Great Stories Are About Heartbreak
Great stories almost always involve heartbreak. It's no surprise that the best writers experienced heartbreak in their own lives.
Today, to celebrate heartbreak, I've compiled some of the best heartbreak quotes from famous authors.
Not only am I confessing my writer's heartbreak, but so are some of our favorite authors.
Oscar Wilde
“The heart was made to be broken.” —Oscar Wilde
Norman Rush
“I feel like someone after a deluge being asked to describe the way it was before the flood while I'm still plucking seaweed out of my hair.” —Norman Rush
Virginia Woolf
“The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” —Virginia Woolf
Stephen King
“Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.” —Stephen King
Sylvia Plath
“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorry.” —Sylvia Plath
My Heartbreak Quote
After my last post, challenging you to write about the hardest experience of your lives, I was overwhelmed with the honesty and support there was for one another.
So I took a page out of my own book and wrote about my own heartbreak. Don't worry, I'll spare you the sappy, pathetic, whining rant.
After my personal writing, and heartbreak quote searching, I came to the conclusion that I had my own “confessional heartbreak quote.”
What do you think of these writers' quotes on heartbreak? Which is your favorite? Tell me in the comments below.
PRACTICE
Take fifteen minutes and practice writing your own quote on heartbreak. Draw from personal experience or fictional experience. Post your practice in the comments below!
A broken heart is mended only through unbearable pain and sorrow and, sometimes, nearly crippling self-doubt. But the light on the other side is soft and gentle and warm and healing, and so you must go, despite the difficulty of the trip.
Love this! Thanks for sharing!
I agree. The other side has beauty, compassion & joy! 😉 <3
Check out my debut novel about a young American woman who goes to El Salvador during their civil war: tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
This is beautiful! Thank you for sharing.
If you stop being who you were meant to be or stop doing what you were meant to do that in itself is heart ache.
Or as the line in my favorite movie flash dance says it
“You give up your dream you die”
Oh, I like it! Definitely resonates!
The problem i s that heartbreak is not just a balloon that fills with so much pain that it finally bursts and is gone. No. Heartbreak is more like a bubble pipe. It may start as a filling and a bursting but the pipe just keeps putting little bubbles of heartbreak that sneak up on and burst, inundating you again with the tears filling that bubble. You turn a corner and run into a bubble because there receeding into the distance is a figure that reminds you of your heartbreak. You smell cinnamon and apples and find another bubble of heartbreak bursting, rminding you of how she liked to bake. So, until the bubble pipe runs dry, there will always be a moment of heartbreak, just around the next corner.
Thanks for sharing Gary, I really like the analogy you use to describe the bubbling, feels so true!
Pain teaches us so much about ourselves.
Beautiful. I feel like the ending you wrote is perfect. There’s a quote that I’ve heard that goes something like this–“Grieving is a by-product of love. Welcome it when it comes. It means that you truly loved.”
Gary, what beautiful description of heartbreak you have written! Losing a spouse definitely fills the bubble pipe and, therefore, informs the writing, doesn’t it? Thank you so much!
Gary’s anything but little pen.
Beautiful and emotional piece. Lovely use of bubbles. Thanks for sharing.
The ending is perfect because is so true. Sometimes we have felt pain for so long we end up getting used to it.
I’ve been hurt so many times by men, that my heart refuses to mourn the loss of any male who is not my brother, my child or my dog.
Sigh! Love IS for the birds! Why do I fall for the men who stare at my breasts and head right to my thighs? They always plunge headfirst into my bucket, say I am “finger lickin’ good,” but they always end up wanting someone boneless, hotter, spicier with an extra crispy attitude. Can’t they see, those fresh women are so over processed and definitely no good for them!? I start to question myself, why am I such a pigeon to fall for these guys? Maybe I AM too Original recipe for this day and age? And why do I have to go cold turkey after the breakup?! I call fowl! Still, I get so chicken when it comes to starting something again with someone else. I duck and dodge love, I just don’t do it right. This is going south fast. Hopefully,the right one will swoop in someday 🙂
Kimberly, thanks for sharing. We learn so much about ourselves through heartbreak. I am hopeful for the future and the amazing story that is being written through your life.
Likewise Kellie! I will always choose to smile through the pain and laugh through the tears
I agree with Kellie, Kimberly. I was where you are once. One day, an intuitive woman told me that my perfect mate is someone I already know. I thought she was crazy until I got in touch with a teacher I had known. We were 2 1/2 hours apart by then, but we made it happen! We are happily married now & about to celebrate our 10th anniversary!
Write down what you want in a mate & keep the list close to your heart!
Check out my debut novel about a young American woman who goes to El Salvador during their civil war: tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
P.S. I couldn’t have written my novel without his love & support.
Ha ha, you definitely know a way to a man’s heart.
Absolutely, Thomas, but too bad most of them were too “full of it” to begin with. 😉
Virginia Woolf’s most agrees with my own: In order to feel great happiness, we must also be willing to feel great sadness.
Check out my debut novel about a young American woman who goes to El Salvador during their civil war: tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
We can only go as far as we have experienced, I like it.
Thanks for sharing!
True heartbreak is like the fire of the Phoenix; intense, all consuming, total destruction… only to allow the person to rise from the ashes new, stronger, better, and full of life because of it.
Kellie, that is so good. I love the picture of ashes. Hope. Bam.
Thanks for sharing!
Beautiful quotes, all. I wish this were a WordPress blog so I could re-post it on my blog.
Check out my debut novel about a young American woman who goes to El Salvador during their civil war: tinyurl.com/klxbt4y
Kellie, your quote resonates with me. It is very true, and you are very brave and inspiring. I wish I could give you a sister hug. <3
True Love
Who can explain true love?
Who can describe the heights of its joy or the depths of its pain?
Those who love the most are those that hurt the most.
They're the tender souls.
True love is humble.
It is self-less.
It's the lover who breaks up with him because she knows they will both be better without each other. She doesn't hate him. Her heart screams for him to hold her now more than ever, and yet she says "goodbye."
It is only the broken heart that can heal.
And the healing comes.
God brings it in its time, and it washes over your soul like the first rain of spring. It awakens you from your sleep to remind you that the world is alive again.
Somehow the colors are brighter than before.
True love will break you.
But it will heal you too.
This is SO beautiful. I am so thankful you shared this.
Sounds like you have a lot of wisdom!
Thank you for your encouragement, it means so much to me.
All quotes are beautiful. Another one I recall is one of the French dramatist Jean Annouilh: ‘One who has been happy in love, have not the slightest idea of what love is.’ Sometimes I think that heartbreak comes from the wounded ego, as Robert Frost wrote: ‘Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.’
Interesting quote Philip, thanks for sharing!
I told myself I would never get over her – total bullshit, thank the Lord.
Ha, nice quote!
My heart is tenderized through it’s little fissures, cracks, crevices, brought on by the suffering of loss. It is more deeply attuned to love, more capable of experiencing love, giving love, feeling worthy of love, more able to experience the expansiveness of love; the looking outward to who needs love and upward to love of the Lord of heaven. There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.
Nice job Kat! My favorite part, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”
So great! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it.
I really liked Gary G Little’s. Simply true and beautiful piece on heartbreak.
But I believe heartbreak is literally a bubble. It’s out there when you can see and feel it, but as soon as you try to give it a touch which is a description, they disappear into the thin air, becoming non-existent.
Heart is often not felt to be there until a crack enters through.
I like your description of the crack entering the heart.
Creates a great image!
Thanks for sharing!
Heartbreak is a division of body and soul. The soul is dead, the body is not.
To be in love is to be feel all your fears twice. To experience heartbreak is to feel nothing.
When ones heart is broken, emotions are not perceptible, they are you, they consume you.
Those are great. I really like, “To be in love is to feel all your fears twice.”
Agreed.
The schoolyard was harsh, ugly and unfamiliar-low, poorly built classrooms set at strange angles, too close to one another. The students, although obviously boys and girls, bore no resemblance to the friends 12,000 miles away. They spoke differently, ate different sweets, sniggered and laughed at her differentness.
First lesson in the new school, she was made to come to the front of the room and give a talk. Something she had not had one minute of practice doing, ever. The sneering faces and guffaws, cruel eyes watching for anything to laugh at were a scene from an expressionist painting. Unconsciously speaking, like a robot programmed to fail, her talk was over. The seat found.
Double trouble. Interval found her in the toilets, grey concrete, cold, noisy, a prison cell. She was twelve, but her period was regular and heavy, it trapped her during break time, while the blood fell in the white bowl. Numbness crept over her like a shell of protection that stopped feelings penetrating, doing deep damage.
Introduction to adulthood was bitter and unexpected. One boy told her he had sex with his sister. She didn’t even know what sex was.
Back home, miles away, she had played with her white kitten, with one eye blue, the other green and wept to say goodbye to him, comforted only by the dream of a beautiful new country filled with rivers, tree ferns, oceans and sun.
It was eight years of heartbreak before the dream was found in the new land. Loneliness, differences, disorientation filled that gap.
The wrench of being pulled out of her own soft landscape into the strange never discussed. Maybe not understood.
She is settled and grateful now, having found her place among true friendships-ready to call this other land ‘almost home.’
Fairy tales take simple things, and with a wave of the wand, turn them into the most fanciful. How we often desire that same wand to change the situation that we find ourselves in; extending moments of joy, or erasing periods of heartache.
The reality that we live in is not what we want when there are so many other options available to our imagination. Time, once upon us, offers an endless chasm of what could be, and is only limited by what we can temporarily avoid.
When sorrow overtakes us as a vast ocean and ceaseless tide, we find a wish granting fish, or a song filled mermaid. Our cloudy skies are backdrops for a flying carpet. Even those times of pleasure can have us wear a glass slipper.
Life can be messy, so we often use magic to clean up the truths of love and hate.
This is really powerful! I love your comparison to magic, so true.
Thanks for sharing!
What has been my greatest heartbreak? Was it the moment of his final breath as I
watched the heart monitor become a straight line, all the while knowing that
this moment signaled seismic change in my life?
Was it as I planned his funeral, all the while my mind in a jumble of
grief? Or has it been the countless
moments I spend inside our home without him to call out to me in his lilting
accented voice?
Truthfully, it all runs together like a mucky, blackish
indigo tie dye with splashes of red that accents the raw pain.
There is not a single moment to identify my greatest heartbreak. It is all about the years that led up to his
death, the anguish of watching as his mind became shrouded by disease that
robbed him of memories. It must be a
terrible thing to experience such a loss of self. It is also agonizing to watch helplessly as a
loved one slowly descends behind the dark curtain.
The loss of this man, the person responsible for radical
change in my own life has been my greatest heartbreak. Four years later, my
heart is still raw and broken. I wonder, does it ever go away?
Linda, this is really powerful, and awful, I’m sorry.
Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Kellie
As I read your words, Linda, I can feel the hearrbreak in my belly. I am so sorry for your loss.
Thank you, Diane.
None of us can look directly at a broken heart.
Instead, we wait, hoping with bated breath that it won’t see us as we try not to see it. We wait until the cracks become scars, until the pain stops, like little kids that only look beneath the bed in the light of day. We can’t look directly into that dark weeping, we know, because even though heartbreak won’t kill us, but it might easily drive us mad.
Great job Len. I really like the imagery of cracks becoming scars.
I agree with you, we definitely have a hard time looking at a broken heart.
Thanks for sharing!
I Can’t Believe He’s Gone
By Kiki Stamatiou a. k. a. Joanna Maharis
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” I cried to one of my cousins with my lips quivering, as we both looked on when my brother John was taken of the respirator and other machines he was hooked onto. He never came out of his coma. My entire body shook with grief, and my cousin walked me out of the room.
I didn’t want to leave. I shouted, “I’m not going to leave my brother behind.”
“You have to leave him, honey. He’s with God, now. I don’t like this anymore than you do, but what else can we do. He’s brain dead. There’s not much else we can do for him. Let him go in peace so he wouldn’t feel anymore pain. I’m so sorry, honey, but I don’t know what else to tell you,” she cried with tears falling from her eyes, hugging me tight.
“I wish John didn’t have to die. That father of mine should have been a better father than he was. If he wasn’t abusive and an alcoholic most of the time, he’d of been able to lead by proper example. It’s his fault John was foolish enough to get into the car of that drunk driver. If he didn’t, he’d still be alive and well. The evil parasite lured him into the car, by pretending to be his friend. John trusted that filthy parasite when he shouldn’t have,”
I shouted while breaking away from the hug, and began smacking the walls in the hallway of the hospital to vent my frustration.
“He’s not going to come back to life, honey. You can’t bring John back. I wish I could bring him back and change the overall outcome, but I can’t. What would you have me do, Kiki? Tell me how I can help you to overcome and get through this?” My cousin asked me with her arms in the air.
“I wish John was here and alive. This is a nightmare I can’t wake up from. I don’t want him to be where he is. I want him to come home with us so we can celebrate Christmas in a few weeks from now. What about Christmas, huh? How am I supposed to celebrate Christmas knowing I will never see my brother again?” I asked in hysterics while waving my arms in the air.
My cousin grabbed a hold of me and pulled me close to her, because I had a breakdown. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was overcome with rage. I wanted to kill the guy who was responsible for my brother being dead. I wanted the
driver of the car to suffer. I wanted revenge.
“Kiki, revenge isn’t the answer. In the Bible, God says, “Vengeance is mine. You can’t see to go out and destroy anyone. The guy who killed Johnny will be punished by God. Please don’t ever take matters into your own hands. I don’t want you to suffer anymore than you already are. I don’t want you to suffer at all. Please believe me when I say I’m sorry you’re suffering. I wish there was more I could do for you. And I wish I could bring your brother back to life so he can find some happiness in life. But maybe he’ll find peace and happiness with God in heaven. You will see him again when the time comes. I believe that with all my heart,” she said while wiping the tears from my eyes with a tissue she pulled out of her coat pocket.
© Copyright, Kiki Stamatiou, 2015
Thanks for sharing Kiki, that is heartbreaking.
You wrote it in a beautiful, honoring way.
So sorry, I know this relates to so many people and this story is powerful.
Thank you so much, Kellie McGann. I appreciate that.
“The feeling we call heartbreak is not the heart breaking, for if it did we would all be gone from this world. Rather, it is the feeling of your soul drawing deep inside of the heart, inside its vessel, in a desperate attempt to save itself, to let the unsalvageable fall as tears and put the wreckage back together.”
Lauren, this is so great! You wrote this?! It’s incredible.
You’re a great writer! Can’t wait to see more of your writing!
Thanks for sharing!
Kellie! Thanks so much for your article! Love it!
Not a native English speaker, as a little thank you, the attempt to translate one of my heart-break notes, a variation of a Goethe poem … No lyrics, just a confession: Heartbreaks are so deeply human, how could we live without them?
Two hearts, alas!, are beating in my bosom
One demands in sorrow and in lust
To bleed to death and blossom
The other one just beats. It must.
Wow, this is so great!
It’s hard to believe your not a native english speaker! The poem is beautiful!
I agree, “Heartbreaks are so deeply human, how could we live without them?”
Thanks for sharing this!
“True love is letting go, yet here I am hanging on.”
-M.FlynnFollen
Kellie, I Hope your feeling better… or letting the heartbreak fuel your writer’s fire.
“…yet here I am hanging on”
Well-phrased; brings forth contemplation
Shock. Disbelief. How could this happen? Why did this happen? Hand to chest, as if to protect the heart, no match for the pain which slithers past the fingers and penetrates the chest. Heat and aching fill the cavity where love and tenderness should reside. “You need to let go.” How can I? The rupture of life. I walk in a daze. How can people be living a normal life? Don’t they feel the pain? My friends say they understand; that helps. It’s still lonely. I alone walk this path, knowing the heartache fills my cells, testing me to grow beyond, to transform this into the lessons of life which bring wisdom from experience. I treasure that woman who I will become. For now, I ache.
It doesn’t feel as if my heart was broken. Sometimes the pain is so deep
and sharp, it feels more like emptiness; as if I have no heart at all.
Quote: “Revel in the chaos”. It is tatted on my right leg and the delight started over a month ago. I was scared, excited, worried, and ridiculed by the thought of what others would think about me. The present situation was stressful and weird because It was happening to me and every test confirmed it. Skin was looking great appetite was the peak of Kilimanjaro. I had signs for 5 weeks and still didn’t know and when I did I still didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to tell somebody and I took their advice. Worst feeling of accepting. What I then experienced was nothing to revel in.. what will always be a part of me Is no longer inside of me. It only creeps in; it never stays that’s how I want to deal with this pain.
I opened my email and saw tons of nude photos of little sluts around the world who liked my exercised power and rough touch and indifference. I had a different name for all of those girls, just in case, you see, one day I would be a family man and all of this will be gone to obscurity like your obscure language I studied and I knew you saw innumerable worlds expanding inside of you just by the vision of me and you disregarded my sex games and fuck toys as if they were part of my morning breakfast, I had to have them all and it was alright because you’d come back for more endlessly, just like them, and I will pretend not to see your obvious-like-the-Sun pain.