Elena Vanishing Quotes

She meant something different: she wanted to vanish; she wanted every one of her cells to disappear, nothing of her ever to be found. And since I know her well, or at least I think I know her, I take it for granted that she has found a way to disappear, to leave not so much as a hair anywhere in this world.

Where does thin become fat? Where does success become failure? Where does a great future become a horrible past full of heartache and regret?

Anger is honest. Hatred is a backhanded compliment. Envy is the best gift of all. But let them turn you into a victim, and you're labelled for life. Pity is the sea you drown in.

The frantumaglia is an unstable landscape, an infinite aerial or aquatic mass of debris that appears to the I, brutally, as its true and unique inner self. The frantumaglia is the storehouse of time without the orderliness of a history, a story. The frantumaglia is an effect of the sense of loss, when we’re sure that everything that seems to us stable, lasting, an anchor for our life, will soon join that landscape of debris that we seem to see. The frantumaglia is to perceive with excruciating anguish the heterogeneous crowd from which we, living, raise our voice, and the heterogeneous crowd into which it is fated to vanish.

Stress used to gnaw and saw away inside me like a tiny black hole. I learned that in spite of the stress, I could do everything I needed to do: study, make top grades, shop for the right clothes, and put on that perfect smile. Some days, I felt like Wonder Woman. The only thing I couldn't do was eat.

The next day, at breakfast and during the entire drive to Milan, he talked passionately about what he considered the most exciting period of his life, the years between 1945 and 1948. I heard in his voice a genuine melancholy, which vanished, however, when he went on to describe with an equally genuine enthusiasm the new climate of revolution, the energy—he said—that was infusing young and old. I kept nodding yes, struck by how important it was for him to convince me that my present was in fact the return of his thrilling past.

So I lie still and take deep, quiet breaths. Pain doesn't bother me. I'm not afraid. I'm used to living with pain.

My heart hurts -- my damaged heart. My heart is thin, even if I'm not.

Because sometimes, you have to be where they can't see you. Sometimes you have to get away.

It's the girl lost in the forest. A forest that isn't even there.

Accept that to be adult is to disappear, is to learn to hide to the point of vanishing?

There is a Beautiful Creature Living in a hole you have dug,

When we died, the only things we’d leave behind of importance were our deeds. Our corpses would rot and our treasured belongings would wind up in someone else’s house or in a landfill. Our clothes don’t tell the stories of our lives, and no one would remember what kind of dishes we had. But they’d remember the thing we’ve done. Our actions would live on and tell the stories of our lives long after we’d vanished from the earth.

A skull. A shell of death between me and my life. For years, that skull has stifled my better intentions. The bad people I know--the abusive guys and self-destructive friends--have been right there with me on the inside. But the good ones, the ones who cared for me--the ones I would have had to learn to care for in return--they haven't had a chance to break through. A skull. A shell of death. When does life become death?

I said nothing about myself, nor did she about herself. But the reasons for that reticence were very different. I had no intention of putting into words what had happened to me: it was a bare fact, it had to do with my body, its physiological reactivity. That for the first time a tiny part of another body had entered it seemed to me irrelevant: the nighttime mass of Sarratore communicated to me nothing except a sensation of alienness, and it was a relief that it had vanished like a storm that never arrives. It seemed to me clear, instead, that Lila was silent because she didn’t have words. I felt she was in a state without thoughts or images, as if in detaching herself from Nino she had forgotten in him everything of herself, even the capacity to say what had happened to her, what was happening. This difference between us made me sad. I tried to search in my experience on the beach for something equivalent to her sorrowful-happy disorientation. I also realized that at the Maronti, in Barano, I had left nothing, not even that new self that had been revealed. I had taken everything with me, and so I didn’t feel the urgency, which I read in Lila’s eyes, in her half-closed mouth, in her clenched fists, to go back, to be reunited with the person I had had to leave. And if on the surface my condition might seem more solid, more compact, here instead, beside Lila, I felt sodden, earth too soaked with water.

That's my conscience. We all have one. Mine never lets me settle for second best. There's no place in life for losers.

Somewhere in my distant memories, I used to be so busy that I longed for a pause button for my life. To freeze the whole world for an hour, or an afternoon: that was my favourite daydream. To stroll across green grass, admire the butterflies stopped in midair, stroke the soft feathers of birds at the feeder. To maybe lie down and take a nap in the sunshine and know that absolutely nothing needed to get done. No deadlines ticking closer. No obligations crowding in. But deadlines don't worry me anymore. Neither do aches and pains. Minor problems like that can't begin to touch the agony I'm in. I lie as still as I can to keep the thoughts and memories from finding me, but sick misery clings to me anyway, as close as a second skin.

Life is love. Life, in all its suffering, is love. And death is powerless to change that.

I'm playing along. With what strength I have left, I try to reassure them that the rest I'm getting is healing me. But what I really am is finished, and there's no cure for that. I've collapsed like a pile of bones. Where does think become fat? Where does success become failure? Where does a great future become a horrible past full of heartache and regret?

I know she loves me. As crazy as it sounds, I do know that. As unlikely as it seems that anyone could still love what I've become, I don't doubt that love for a second.

Life is a combat zone. People who say it isn't have already lost the war.

Throughout the first six month's of the baby's life, Elena is overcome with a gloom so intense that it takes all her willpower not to be swallowed up by it entirely. All the colour, it seems, has drained out of the world and swirled down a long, dark hole along with all the joy. Where once there were yellows and golds to admire, now there is only grey. So deep is the sorrow that afflicts her soul that she has no energy left to love the poor child who lies in her cot for hours cooing and gurgling and reaching up for her feet, while Elena paces anxiously around her bed and wishes she would vanish into thin air like all the other things which once made her happy

You found and defeated the evil Cain was bringing into the world. And now you’re the King’s Champion. You did as I asked.” “I did it for my freedom,” Celaena said. “So you say. But when you called for help—when the amulet snapped, and you let your need be felt—you knew someone would answer. You knew I would answer.” “Why?” Celaena dared ask. “Why answer? Why do I need to be the King’s Champion?” “Because there are people who need you to save them as much as you yourself need to be saved,” she said. “Deny it all you want, but there are people—your friends—who need you here. Your friend, Nehemia, needs you here. Because I was sleeping—a long, endless sleep—and I was awoken by a voice. And the voice didn’t belong to one person, but to many. Some whispering, some screaming, some not even aware that they were crying out. But they all want the same thing.” She touched the center of Celaena’s forehead. Heat flared, and a blue light flashed across Elena’s face as Celaena’s mark burned and then faded. “And when you are ready—when you start to hear them crying out as well—then you will know why I came to you, and why I have stood by you, and will continue to watch over you, no matter how many times you shove me away. Until that day comes, you’re exactly where you need to be. From the king’s side, you’ll be able to see what needs to be done. But for now—enjoy the accomplishment.” “Fine,” she breathed. “Thank you for saving my life.” Elena bowed her head. “Blood ties can’t be broken,” she whispered, and then vanished, her words echoing in the silent tomb.

Food doesn’t help us be, she has written. It helps us do.

Anger is honest. Hatred is a backhanded compliment. Envy is the best gift of all. But let them turn you into a victim, and you’re labeled for life. Pity is the sea you drown in.