This one is real. It is the closing sentence of the Queen’s message of condolence to the service of remembrance for British victims of the September 11 attacks, read aloud by the British ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer at St Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue, New York, on 20 September 2001, and printed in full the next morning. The thought and most of the phrasing, though, come from the bereavement psychiatrist Colin Murray Parkes.
“Grief is the price we pay for love” Elizabeth II, message to the service of remembrance for British victims of the September 11 attacks, read by Sir Christopher Meyer at St Thomas Church, New York, 20 September 2001; full text printed in The Guardian, 21 September 2001. The phrasing condenses Colin Murray Parkes, "Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life" (1972). · Verbatim: “But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love.”
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In context
Evoking the world of Elizabeth II — Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms. Theme: "Grief is the price we pay for love". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
The documented source
Source
Message from The Queen to the service of remembrance for British victims of 9/11
Read by
Sir Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to Washington
Where & when
St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York · 20 September 2001
Full text printed
The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2001
These are dark and harrowing times for families and friends of those who are missing or who suffered in the attack — many of you here today. My thoughts and my prayers are with you all now and in the difficult days ahead. But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love.
closing of the message
The Guardian printed the message in full on 21 September 2001 under the standfirst “This is the text of the Queen’s message, read by the British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, at the prayer service in St Thomas church, New York.” The famous line is its last sentence.
The parish itself treats the sentence as hers: at the first-anniversary service its rector said they “asked and were graciously given permission by Her Majesty” to carve the final sentence of her message into the memorial stone — Saint Thomas Church, 10 September 2002 ↗.
The message was first published in 2001, so it is well inside copyright; Saint Thomas Church specifically sought Her Majesty’s permission before carving the sentence in 2002, which is how a rights-holder’s consent normally works. The underlying 1972 sentence in Parkes’s Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life is separately in copyright. Short quotation with attribution is ordinary fair use; reproducing either text at length is not.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong about it
The attribution is right for once — but almost everything around it gets garbled, starting with who wrote the words and where the Queen was when they were read.
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OriginationElizabeth II, as the coiner of the phrase not original
The thought and most of the wording are Colin Murray Parkes’s. In Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (1972) he wrote: “The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is, perhaps, the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment” — quoted in full here ↗. The seven-word compression is what the Queen’s message carried.
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DeliveryElizabeth II, speaking in person at a 9/11 service she wasn’t there
The Queen was at Balmoral. The families were in Manhattan, a week after the towers came down, at a service for British dead who in most cases had no remains to bury. Her message ran only a few paragraphs, and it did not attempt consolation until the last two lines — where it stopped attempting it: “But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love.”
The congregation of nearly 700 included Tony and Cherie Blair, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Governor George Pataki and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and The Daily Telegraph reported that the message drew tears ↗. The sentence outlived the occasion almost immediately.
Grief is the price we pay for love.
What happened to the sentence afterwards
A year later, at the first-anniversary service for British nationals, the rector of Saint Thomas Church explained that the parish had “asked and were graciously given permission by Her Majesty” to cut the final sentence of her message into the stone beside a crucifixion memorial — his remarks are on the church’s site ↗.
After the Queen’s death in 2022, Cruse’s former chief executive Debbie Kerslake noted that the line now surfaces among her most famous quotations, and that Prince William quoted his grandmother using these words ↗ — while pointing out that the words were originally Colin Murray Parkes’s.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1926–2022 · Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms
Elizabeth II reigned from 1952 until her death in 2022, and her public words were famously sparing — which is part of why the few sentences that landed, landed hard. The 9/11 message was written from Balmoral and sent to a church full of British families in Manhattan who had no bodies to bury. She never delivered it herself; the ambassador read it, and the congregation wept.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Elizabeth II, message to the service of remembrance for British victims of the September 11 attacks, St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, September 20, 2001; full text printed as “Text of the Queen’s message to New York,” The Guardian, September 21, 2001. The phrasing condenses Colin Murray Parkes, Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life (1972).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Grief is the price we pay for love’?” Last verified 18 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/grief-is-the-price-we-pay-for-love/