“
You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you - Oh, God! would you like to lie with your soul in the grave?
”
”
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
“
But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.
”
”
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
“
Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go,—so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay (Collected Poems)
“
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)
“
He wouldn't let his servants change the sheets on his bed because they still smelled like her, because he went to sleep dreaming that she was still lying beside him.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
“
Once you embrace your value, talents and strengths, it neutralizes when others think less of you.
”
”
Rob Liano
“
But solitude is sadness.'
'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
“
The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Cat’s Cradle)
“
I thought I knew what heartbreak was. I thought that was what Maven did to me. When he stood and left me kneeling. When he told me everything I ever thought him to be was a lie. But then, I believed I loved him.
I know now, I didn't know what love was. Or what even the echo of heartbreak felt like.
To stand in front of a person who is your whole world and be told you are not enough. You are not the choice. You are a shadow to the person who is your sun.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (King's Cage (Red Queen, #3))
“
At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.
”
”
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure)
“
Hi Hazel Well here I am in the office and it’s dead quiet. What I’ll do is email pics of some of the stuff in the files and the comments with them. This is exactly what you wanted – stuff about the Games people played together with comments people made. Perfect!
”
”
Elizabeth Tebby Germaine (A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness)
“
Just because you have stolen someone's heart, luckily owned and occupied as a home, doesn't give you the audacity to enforce hurtful policies.
”
”
Michael Bassey Johnson
“
She ran down the street and round the corner and up two more streets and crossed the road. ‘Will I be safe from him?’ the girl had said. And will I be safe from Samuel? She reached her car and threw her bag on the front seat and sat holding the steering wheel. Where to go, where to run to?
”
”
Elizabeth Tebby Germaine (A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness)
“
I don’t see the point of truth anymore, it causes just as much heartbreak as lying.
”
”
Simon Van Booy (The Secret Lives of People in Love)
“
Jeremy, I’ll say this once,’ he (Jonathan) began, ‘I’m not going to be drawn into any silly squabble you want to invent. I am not going to defend my recent behaviour in the village or anywhere else. I am not going to tell you my plans, I have had reasons for everything I’ve done and a great deal of thinking has gone into my recent very painful decisions…
”
”
Elizabeth Tebby Germaine (A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness)
“
You can only trust your emotions as you can lie to yourself with your brain but not your heart.
”
”
Carl White
“
Stop it!’ The girl jumped out of her chair, ‘Stop torturing me! Stop pretending you didn’t know each other, you planned all this, and then you waited for a wet day and then he was going to come in and then there is this story, and then he’d send the photos off, stop it! Leave me alone!’ She rushed to the door and tore it open and vanished down the hotel stairs.
”
”
Elizabeth Tebby Germaine (A MAN WHO SEEMED REAL: A story of love, lies, fear and kindness)
“
One day it may feel as if energy and enthusiasm are quenched, feelings dried up and emotions scorched, love and affection tangled in a harsh and uninviting setting. Nothing seems to grow anymore. No seed. No flowers. No foreseeable hope. No conceivable prospects. Any blossom of expectation seems to have become an illusion and life appears to have come to a standstill. If no seed of loving care is sown in the untilled, abandoned land, no bud can come into flower. Singer Amy Winehouse felt like lying fallow in the ground of a wasteland "with tears dry, dying a hundred times, going back to black" and leaving eventually for a place of ultimate sorrow and heartbreak, for a point of no return. ( “Amour en friche” )
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
If you’re always looking back at what you’ve lost, you’ll never discover the treasure that lies just up ahead.
”
”
J.E.B. Spredemann (Learning to Love - Saul's Story (Amish Girls #3.5))
“
Soon after the completion of his college course, his whole nature was kindled into one intense and passionate effervescence of romantic passion. His hour came,—the hour that comes only once; his star rose in the horizon,—that star that rises so often in vain, to be remembered only as a thing of dreams; and it rose for him in vain. To drop the figure,—he saw and won the love of a high-minded and beautiful woman, in one of the northern states, and they were affianced. He returned south to make arrangements for their marriage, when, most unexpectedly, his letters were returned to him by mail, with a short note from her guardian, stating to him that ere this reached him the lady would be the wife of another. Stung to madness, he vainly hoped, as many another has done, to fling the whole thing from his heart by one desperate effort. Too proud to supplicate or seek explanation, he threw himself at once into a whirl of fashionable society, and in a fortnight from the time of the fatal letter was the accepted lover of the reigning belle of the season; and as soon as arrangements could be made, he became the husband of a fine figure, a pair of bright dark eyes, and a hundred thousand dollars; and, of course, everybody thought him a happy fellow.
The married couple were enjoying their honeymoon, and entertaining a brilliant circle of friends in their splendid villa, near Lake Pontchartrain, when, one day, a letter was brought to him in that well-remembered writing. It was handed to him while he was in full tide of gay and successful conversation, in a whole room-full of company. He turned deadly pale when he saw the writing, but still preserved his composure, and finished the playful warfare of badinage which he was at the moment carrying on with a lady opposite; and, a short time after, was missed from the circle. In his room,alone, he opened and read the letter, now worse than idle and useless to be read. It was from her, giving a long account of a persecution to which she had been exposed by her guardian's family, to lead her to unite herself with their son: and she related how, for a long time, his letters had ceased to arrive; how she had written time and again, till she became weary and doubtful; how her health had failed under her anxieties, and how, at last, she had discovered the whole fraud which had been practised on them both. The letter ended with expressions of hope and thankfulness, and professions of undying affection, which were more bitter than death to the unhappy young man. He wrote to her immediately:
I have received yours,—but too late. I believed all I heard. I was desperate. I am married, and all is over. Only forget,—it is all that remains for either of us."
And thus ended the whole romance and ideal of life for Augustine St. Clare. But the real remained,—the real, like the flat, bare, oozy tide-mud, when the blue sparkling wave, with all its company of gliding boats and white-winged ships, its music of oars and chiming waters, has gone down, and there it lies, flat, slimy, bare,—exceedingly real.
Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
“
I was the man who never lied
Never lied until today
But I just couldn't break your heart
Like you did mine yesterday
”
”
Maroon 5
“
Forgiveness is a transformative act because it asks you to be a more empathetic and compassionate person, thereby making you better than the person you were when you were first hurt.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
From then on, my sense of smell swelled beyond reason. Mostly ordinary odors, but sometimes I imagine I can smell the stink of a lie. Or the perfume of a pure heart. Or the heartbreaking smell of what could have been.
”
”
Rebecca Rosenberg (Champagne Widows: First Woman of Champagne, Veuve Clicquot)
“
And now, as I'm lying alone in my own bed, I keep thinking about writhing against him last night, naked and vulnerable. Even after we'd both risen and fallen, peaked and plummeted, even after Marcus was physically shrinking from inside me, I couldn't stop clutching, crying, trying. Trying to pull him deeper, deeper, deeper within.
Trying to make him more a part of me than I am myself.
”
”
Megan McCafferty (Charmed Thirds (Jessica Darling, #3))
“
The most important thing is believing your beautiful. The benefit of improving one's looks lies largely therein.
”
”
Lynn Weingarten (The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers (The Secret Sisterhood of Heartbreakers, #1))
“
The problem was
you kept waiting for another
to call you powerful.
You naively believed men like him
were capable of loving
women who make
crowns for thorns.
The problem was
You loved him so shamelessly,
even his lies became holy.
”
”
Ijeoma Umebinyuo (Questions for Ada)
“
It was just a lie that seemed real.
It was a promise that was never meant to be true.
The forever that had a deadline.
It felt like falling in love, but it was falling in a
heartbreak café!
”
”
Moffat Machingura (How I Kissed Heartbreak Goodbye)
Cassandra Clare (Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices, #1))
“
But these clouds won’t leave
Walk away
Barely breathing
As I’m lying on the floor
Take my heart
As you’re leaving
I don’t need it anymore
”
”
Mayday Parade
“
Why wait to forgive and let go only after you have sufficiently wallowed in your despair? Why not forgive and let go now?
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
When the heart
Is cut or cracked or broken
Do not clutch it
Let the wound lie open
Let the wind
From the good old sea blow in
To bathe the wound with salt
And let it sting.
Let a stray dog lick it
Let a bird lean in the hole and sing
A simple song like a tiny bell
And let it ring
Let it go.
Let it out.
Let it all unravel.
Let it free and it can be
A path on which to travel.
”
”
Michael Leunig (The Prayer Tree)
“
People are going to break promises, and they will have every right to till the point you realize that you don't change plans based on someone else's words.
”
”
Sanhita Baruah
“
There has to be a whole other level of pain when your soul gets ripped in half.
”
”
Karen M. McManus (One of Us Is Back (One of Us Is Lying, #3))
“
Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak. “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,” he’d say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.
”
”
Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma)
“
The dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining.
“Why are you crying?!”
“Because Fufi loves another boy.”
“So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.”
Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent.
I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to, and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them and buy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.
”
”
Trevor Noah (Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood)
“
They had lied, those who had extolled the virtues of love—its pleasures, its sublimity—those who had told her that it was beautiful and worthwhile.
There was nothing beautiful about it.
It was awful.
”
”
Sarah MacLean (Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke's Heart (Love By Numbers, #3))
“
A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as aclimb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finall yreach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the "real" top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.
Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, "Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?" Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. "Because it's there." Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. Paradocically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heighs of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare - an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.
”
”
Saul D. Alinsky (Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals)
“
But in the midst of all that uncertainty and lack of clarity, there lies a wild beauty. A hope. Possibility. The promise of something bigger than us happening just beneath the surface that we can’t see.
”
”
Mandy Hale (You Are Enough: Heartbreak, Healing, and Becoming Whole)
“
You can't really hear heartbreak. It is remarkably silent but excruciating all the same.
”
”
Katherine Owen (This Much is True (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
Unrequited love is a ridiculous state that makes you try to convince your heart of something your mind knows is a lie!
”
”
Alex Haditaghi
“
Love alone means nothing unless you have a tortured heart for it to soothe.
”
”
Piper Payne (White Lies (The Black and White Duet, #2))
“
That cowboy had heartbreak written all over him and she'd be damned if she knew why every time he blew into town she ended up naked before he ended up gone. Reed always ended up gone.
”
”
Cindy Gerard (Whisper No Lies (Black Ops Inc., #3))
“
The mighty trojans fell, and so did i.
A wooden horse you were not, yet in a pool of my own blood i lie.
Dawn follows every dusk, and all that rises - fall it must.
So, my blood shall find its way and trickle down your eyes.
The day your deeds of today, eventually make you cry.
”
”
Anurag Anand (The Quest For Nothing)
“
You're safe with me, Mira. And I'm safe with you."
He kissed her again to prove it. And when the clock struck one - that lone, ominous tone hovering in the dark - they were still kissing. Her razor blade had snagged his shirt and nicked his chest, and they'd ended up lying in the grass, hidden inside a shadow, ignoring their names whenever someone called them. He traced her mouth again and again, like he still couldn't believe it was real.
There would always be a part of him she couldn't know. A secret place where his heartbreak was stored, where lost innocence and regret filled the air like smoke. She had no desire to open that door ... but she didn't know if that would change one day. If the key would tempt her, if a fairy would manipulate her or she would just be curious. But she had to believe she could be strong enough to resist. That what she wanted - what they both wanted - mattered more than the path that had been laid out for them.
She let her hand slip under his shirt to touch the heart mark on his back, and he brought her other hand to his lips, and kissed every finger he'd entrusted with the key. He was so much more than his curse, and she was so much more than the girl who could betray him.
Together ... they could be anything.
”
”
Sarah Cross (Kill Me Softly (Beau Rivage, #1))
“
I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real,
and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again."
"Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy
and then a desperate desire for the cave.
He will get lonely there eventually and come back."
"To me?"
He doesn't pause. "To someone new."
"And I'll have to watch another girl?"
"You will have to, but you will also know
what lies ahead for that poor girl.
”
”
Emma Forrest (Your Voice in My Head)
“
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want you
I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish you were mine
The truth is, you stole my heart from afar
The truth is, you still have it.
”
”
Justin Wetch (Bending The Universe)
“
She knows now. She knows that the smiles, the romance, the sparkly boy band dream - it's all just fantasy. fantasy and lies.
”
”
Alice Oseman (I Was Born for This (I Was Born for This, #1))
“
Did you laugh when I left your room? When I told you all my greatest secrets, and all you gave me were lies?
”
”
Alex Aster (Nightbane (Lightlark, #2))
“
My heart is not in my body;
it's lying under the castle you burned down.
”
”
Courtney Peppernell (Pillow Thoughts (Pillow Thoughts, #1))
“
She was so fuckin’ lovely in her despair, tragic in a romantic way like Juliet before her Romeo. Of course, even my Flower Child made heartbreak look pretty.
”
”
Giana Darling (Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men, #5))
“
It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being.
”
”
Frederick Buechner (The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days)
“
Sweet girl, maybe close the world off and look at him for an hour
or two.
This is your fairy.
It ain’t perfect and it ain’t honey sweet with roses on the bed.
It’s real and raw and ugly at times. But this is your love.
Don’t throw it away searching for someone else’s love. Don’t be greedy. Instead, shelter it. Protect it. Capture every second of easy, pull through every storm of hardship. And when you can, look at him, lying next to you, trusting you not to harm him. Trusting you not to go.
Be someone’s someone for someone.
Be that someone for him.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson
“
I can not remember telling my parents that I was studying classics, they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard-put to name one less useful in Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys of an executive bathroom. Now I would like to make it clear in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date for blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction. The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I can not criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor. And I quite agree with them, that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty, entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression, It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something by which to pride yourself, but poverty itself, is romanticized only by fools. But I feared at your age was not poverty, but failure... Now, I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted, and well educated, that you have never known heartbreak, hardship, or heartache. Talent and intelligence, never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates... ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
“
You’re thinking, maybe it would be easier to let it slip
let it go
say ”I give up” one last time and give him a sad smile.
You’re thinking
it shouldn’t be this hard,
shouldn’t be this dark,
thinking
love could flow easily with no holding back
and you’ve seen others find their match and build something great
together,
of each other,
like two halves fitting perfectly and now they achieve great things
one by one, always together, and it seems grand.
But you love him. Love him like a black stone in your chest you couldn’t live without because it fits in there. Makes you who you are and the thought of him gone—no more—makes your chest tighten up and
maybe this is your fairytale. Maybe this is your castle.
You could get it all on a shiny piece of glass with wooden stools and a neverending blooming garden
but that’s not yours. This is yours. The cracks and the faults,
the ugly words in the winter
walking home alone and angry
but falling asleep thinking you love him.
This is your fairy tale.
The quiet in the hallway, wishing for him to turn around, tell you to stay, tell you to please don’t go I need you
like you need me
and maybe it’s not a Jane Austen novel but this is your novel and
your castle
and you can run from it your whole life but this is here
in front of you.
Maybe nurture it?
Sweet girl, maybe close the world off and look at him for an hour
or two.
This is your fairy.
It ain’t perfect and it ain’t honey sweet with roses on the bed.
It’s real and raw and ugly at times. But this is your love.
Don’t throw it away searching for someone else’s love. Don’t be greedy. Instead, shelter it. Protect it. Capture every second of easy, pull through every storm of hardship. And when you can, look at him, lying next to you, trusting you not to harm him. Trusting you not to go.
Be someone’s someone for someone.
Be that someone for him.
That’s your fairy tale. This is your castle.
Now move in. Build a home. Build a house. Build a safety around things you love.
It’s yours if you make it so.
Welcome home, sweet girl, it will be all be fine.
”
”
Charlotte Eriksson
“
I thought I knew what heartbreak was. I thought that was what Maven did to me. When he stood and left me kneeling. When he told me everything I ever thought him to be was a lie. But then, I believed I loved him.
I know now, I didn’t know what love was. Or what even the echo of heartbreak felt like.
To stand in front of a person who is your whole world and be told you are not enough. You are not the choice. You are a shadow to the person who is your sun.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (King's Cage (Red Queen, #3))
“
Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animals—never damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another being—the eagle would look down on a different world. The salmon would be crowding up the rivers, and passenger pigeons would darken the sky. Wolves, cranes, Nehalem, cougars, Lenape, old-growth forests would still be here, each fulfilling their sacred purpose. I would be speaking Potawatomi. We would see what Nanabozho saw. It does not bear too much imagining, for in that direction lies heartbreak.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
Life is Beautiful?
Beyond all the vicissitudes that are presented to us on this short path
within this wild planet, we can say that life is beautiful.
No one can ever deny that experiencing the whirlwind of emotions
inside this body is a marvel,
we grow with these life experiences,
we strengthen ourselves and stimulate our feelings every day,
in this race where the goal is imminent death
sometimes we are winners and many other times we lose and the darkness surprises us
and our heart is disconnected from this reality halfway
and connects us to the server of the matrix once more,
debugging and updating our database,
erasing all those experiences within this caracara of flesh and blood,
waiting to return to earth again.
"Life is beautiful gentlemen" is cruel and has unfair behavior
about people who looked like a bundle of light
and left this platform for no apparent reason,
but its nature is not similar to our consciousness and feelings,
she has a script for each of us
because it was programmed that way, the architects of the game of life
they know perfectly well that you must experiment with all the feelings, all the emotions and evolve to go to the next levels.
You can't take a quantum leap and get through the game on your own.
inventing a heaven and a hell in order to transcend,
that comes from our fears of our imagination
not knowing what life has in store for us after life is a dilemma
"rather said" the best kept secret of those who control us day by day.
We are born, we grow up, we are indoctrinated in the classrooms
and in the jobs, we pay our taxes,
we reproduce, we enjoy the material goods that it offers us
the system the marketing of disinformation,
Then we get old, get sick and die. I don't like this story!
It looks like a parody of Noam Chomsky,
Let's go back to the beautiful description of beautiful life, it sounds better!
Let's find meaning in all the nonsense that life offers us,
'Cause one way or another we're doomed
to imagine that everything will be fine until the end of matter.
It is almost always like that.
Sometimes life becomes a real nightmare.
A heartbreaking horror that we find impossible to overcome.
As we grow up, we learn to know the dark side of life.
The terrors that lurk in the shadows,
the dangers lurking around every corner.
We realize that reality is much harsher
and ruthless than we ever imagined.
And in those moments, when life becomes a real hell,
we can do nothing but cling to our own existence,
summon all our might and fight with all our might
so as not to be dragged into the abyss.
But sometimes, even fighting with all our might is not enough.
Sometimes fate is cruel and takes away everything we care about,
leaving us with nothing but pain and hopelessness.
And in that moment, when all seems lost,
we realize the terrible truth: life is a death trap,
a macabre game in which we are doomed to lose.
And so, as we sink deeper and deeper into the abyss,
while the shadows envelop us and terror paralyzes us,
we remember the words that once seemed to us
so hopeful: life is beautiful. A cruel and heartless lie,
that leads us directly to the tragic end that death always awaits us.
”
”
Marcos Orowitz (THE MAELSTROM OF EMOTIONS: A selection of poems and thoughts About us humans and their nature)
“
Lies destroy. But, you don’t have to stay broken forever.
”
”
Marjory Sheba
“
Love is just like the flower; it has hidden depths that we rarely ever explore. Beneath the surface lies a network of roots. You can admire the flower for what it is, or you can dig deeper. The more you dig, the more you will find. The real reasons we love a person sometimes exist in the darkest and deepest part of us, the part that knows no logic…or rationale.
”
”
Carol Oates (Iridescent (Ember, #2))
“
Experience," which is just a euphemism for heartache and heartbreak, failed love and false promises, for every time you told yourself This is the real thing and Finally I've found my way home only to end up lost in a muck or lying across rickety train tracks, praying for deliverance and not knowing if that would mean getting run over or being spared; "experience," which is a neutral word that most people know only means something good on a resume, a term that in the rest of life is more like a criminal rap sheet full of mishaps that cannot be expunged, this indelible quality made more frightening because there are no authorities keeping track, no one is forcing you to remember these things, it is all your own fault, it is only you who cannot forget; "experience," which is supposed to be the playground and peep show and life-size labyrinth of adolescence, which can, when it occurs at the right time in life...if it is delivered in moderate and judicious measure...make you a more capable lover and friend, spouse and partner.
”
”
Elizabeth Wurtzel
“
Suffering is the nature of this world. It is the golden standard by which all things are measured. It is not happiness that sets the bar, but agony. Even happiness cannot be fully recognized without the right measure of misery to contrast its borders. Suffering magnifies hunger-exhaustion-prods you to move when prosperity is just a dream out of reach. It is the mortal twin of eternal hope. How you respond to its touch molds you, shapes your future as it rains down oppression like fire over your shoulders.
Deception. It laid over my world like a bruise. Covered it so completely I bought the lie that the shadow offered and found comfort nestled in its thorny arms. I walked the trail it dusted with breadcrumb, walked in the slip noose it had skillfully wove and dove off the cliff without realizing- willingly, with vigor.
Heartbreak. There is no bigger void, no darker shade of soot- no ache more unstoppable than that of a broken heart.
A heart in pieces can very much kill you-without love’s healing touch, you will surely die.
They say time heals all wounds.
They lied.
”
”
Addison Moore (Expel (Celestra, #6))
“
Pru Harris’s mom had taught her to make wishes on pink cars, falling leaves, and brass lamps, because wishing on something as ordinary as stars or wishing wells was a sign of no imagination. Clearly
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that aborting horror you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to say anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknose love. You writer.
”
”
Ernest Hemingway (To Have and Have Not)
“
I need his address."
Sean went brows up. "His address."
"Yes, please."
"You going to show him a good time?" he asked. "Because darlin', he sure could use it."
"I'm on it," she said and then realized what he'd meant, which was not what she'd meant. "Wait, that's not--"
"Oh, it's way too late," Sean said, laughing his ass off.
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
We’re gonna lie when the truth is hard? That’s how this relationship is going to work? All righty, then.
”
”
Gena Showalter (The Harder You Fall (The Original Heartbreakers, #3))
“
You can only give your heart away once, after that, everything else will chase your first love.
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (The Opportunist (Love Me with Lies, #1))
“
Feel free to kiss it better.
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
You had me Jared. I gave you all of me and I gave it willingly but from the first time we met you lied, hid and kept things from me. We didn’t have honesty and without it our foundations crumbled, taking us down with it. I have cried a river of tears over you and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t think I will ever stop loving you, no matter how heartbreakingly hard I try to. But it’s not enough. Let me go.
”
”
Marie Coulson (Bound Together (Bound Together, #1))
“
Standing at the edge of time
Almost falling down to the dark abyss
As I near the end of mine
I reminisce the things I will miss
The smiles and laughter
Running around without a care
The time when my grin will never falter
Being so free, willing my soul to bare
Heartaches, heartbreaks and tears
Now I know better and to myself I will never lie
Because in woe, I learned to love and never fear
Those were the best and worst moments of my life
As the memories rush back to me
I look down and now I feel relieved
Because when it is time
Everything will be fine when I leave
”
”
Isabelle Guzman
“
The woman looked at her heart in all of its fragments. Its voice was clear and true as it reminded her of the injustices done to it. Nothing so forlorn and broken could lie to her — could it? However, the woman was not a rational woman, and did not heed the beings’ warning. “Strip my humanity away, that I may never again walk in the race of men,” was her one wish.
”
”
Esther Dalseno (Drown)
“
I’m here to get fucked, shake shit up a little bit. Get my powers, and take my place. I’m not naïve, I just know what I want, and that’s not children. I have no intention of having pretty babies, or a happy ever after. Love’s destructive and nothing more than a lie to make people think there’s some great force out there waiting for them. So here’s a thought: Why don’t you go home, settle down, have some pretty little heartbreaker babies, and get lost.
”
”
Amelia Hutchins (Playing with Monsters (Playing with Monsters, #1))
“
when it is but it ain't
Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.
Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can’t go home at night,
can’t sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away, smiling.
”
”
Yrsa Daley-Ward
“
Heartbreak comes in many forms: infidelity, lies, or a simple, old fashioned break-up. But, there's another reason no one ever thinks about when it comes to heartbreak. It's something that outweighs the fear of being alone, and tells the brokenhearted individual that he or she will never find love again.
”
”
J.E. Bolton (Best Thing I Never Had (Anthology))
“
But here lies the rub: she’s all I think about. She’s the only person I want to spend time with. I’m fascinated by every little thing she does. And the fact of the matter is, I’m in love with her. Heartbreakingly, soul-wrenchingly, earth-shatteringly in love with her. It’s nothing like I’ve ever felt before. And I need her to love me back more than I need to take my next breath. I can’t imagine a greater agony than this big, pulsing, fierce love I have for her being unreciprocated. I would rather take a hundred blows to the head out on the field, suffer a thousand concussions, than not have her beside me for the rest of my life.
”
”
L.H. Cosway (The Hooker and the Hermit (Rugby, #1))
“
The ending is coming. I can feel it. I don’t know if I can take it this time. But then again, I say that every time and yet, every time I take it. And, I come back to her again for more. I will take whatever time I can get with her. I will do that for a lifetime. I will. I know that much about myself. She is my water. I can never get enough of her, and it appears that I will die trying to love her, to keep her, to hold her with me, even though our time together seems to evaporate so swiftly. It slips through our fingers so damn fast that we don’t even have time to savor it when we’re together.
”
”
Katherine Owen (This Much is True (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
Here’s the truth: I am the female version of a heartbreaker. The one that everyone says is too dedicated to ballet, too self-involved to ever care about anyone else besides herself. I’m the rebel. The bad twin. I am Tally—the loner, the party of one. The love and leave ‘em prototype. Heartless. That is me. I have no time for romance, flowers, or relationships. I like one-night stands with plenty of sex and no promises of a future. I like the lies I tell. I’m comfortable in telling them…most of the time. This is me.
”
”
Katherine Owen (This Much is True (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
When Magnus looked at Imasu, he saw Imasu had dropped his head into his hands.
"Er," Magnus said. "Are you quite all right?"
"I was simply overcome," Imasu said in a faint voice.
Magnus preened slightly. "Ah. Well."
"By how awful that was," Imasu said.
Magnus blinked. "Pardon?"
"I can't live a lie any longer!" Imasu burst out. "I have tried to be encouraging. Dignitaries of the town have been sent to me, asking me to plead with you to stop. My own sainted mother begged me, with tears in her eyes - "
"It isn't as bad as all that - "
"Yes, it is!" It was like a dam of musical critique had broken. Imasu turned on him with eyes that flashed instead of shining. "It is worse than you can possibly imagine! When you play, all of my mother's flowers lose the will to live and expire on the instant. The quinoa has no flavor now. The llamas are migrating because of your music, and llamas are not a migratory animal. The children now believe there is a sickly monster, half horse and half large mournful chicken, that lives in the lake and calls out to the world to grant it the sweet release of death. The townspeople believe that you and I are performing arcane magic rituals - "
"Well, that one was rather a good guess," Magnus remarked.
" - using the skull of an elephant, an improbably large mushroom, and one of your very peculiar hats!"
"Or not," said Magnus. "Furthermore, my hats are extraordinary."
"I will not argue with that." Imasu scrubbed a hand through his thick black hair, which curled and clung to his fingers like inky vines. "Look, I know that I was wrong. I saw a handsome man, thought that it would not hurt to talk a little about music and strike up a common interest, but I don't deserve this. You are going to get stoned in the town square, and if I have to listen to you play again, I will drown myself in the lake."
"Oh," said Magnus, and he began to grin. "I wouldn't. I hear there is a dreadful monster living in that lake."
Imasu seemed to still be brooding about Magnus's charango playing, a subject that Magnus had lost all interest in. "I believe the world will end with a noise like the noise you make!"
"Interesting," said Magnus, and he threw his charango out the window.
"Magnus!"
"I believe that music and I have gone as far as we can go together," Magnus said. "A true artiste knows when to surrender."
"I can't believe you did that!"
Magnus waved a hand airily. "I know, it is heartbreaking, but sometimes one must shut one's ears to the pleas of the muse."
"I just meant that those are expensive and I heard a crunch.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Bane Chronicles)
“
My brother, when he went to sleep, always put his shoes beside the swag, and when he got up in the morning the first thing he did was put his shoes on. He did that ever since he was little. And he never went anywhere without his hat. So, for him to walk off up the road without his hat or his shoes, that’s just straight-up lies. No. I know that for a fact.
”
”
Nicole Morris (Vanished: True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons)
“
We think we know the ones we love, and though we should not be surprised to find that we don't, it is heartbreak nonetheless. It is the hardest kind of knowledge, not just about another but about ourselves. To see our lives as a fiction we have written and believed. Silence and lies. The sensation I felt that evening--that I did not know my Holland, did not know myself, that it was perhaps impossible to know a single soul on earth--it was a fearful loneliness.
”
”
Andrew Sean Greer (The Story of a Marriage)
“
HONESTY
is reached through the doorway of grief and loss. Where we cannot go in our mind, our memory, or our body is where we cannot be straight with another, with the world, or with our self. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties: all of us are afraid of loss, in all its forms, all of us, at times, are haunted or overwhelmed by the possibility of a disappearance, and all of us therefore, are one short step away from dishonesty. Every human being dwells intimately close to a door of revelation they are afraid to pass through. Honesty lies in understanding our close and necessary relationship with not wanting to hear the truth.
The ability to speak the truth is as much the ability to describe what it is like to stand in trepidation at this door, as it is to actually go through it and become that beautifully honest spiritual warrior, equal to all circumstances, we would like to become. Honesty is not the revealing of some foundational truth that gives us power over life or another or even the self, but a robust incarnation into the unknown unfolding vulnerability of existence, where we acknowledge how powerless we feel, how little we actually know, how afraid we are of not knowing and how astonished we are by the generous measure of grief that is conferred upon even the most average life.
Honesty is grounded in humility and indeed in humiliation, and in admitting exactly where we are powerless. Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness. Honesty allows us to live with not knowing. We do not know the full story, we do not know where we are in the story; we do not know who is at fault or who will carry the blame in the end. Honesty is not a weapon to keep loss and heartbreak at bay, honesty is the outer diagnostic of our ability to come to ground in reality, the hardest attainable ground of all, the place where we actually dwell, the living, breathing frontier where there is no realistic choice between gain or loss.
”
”
David Whyte
“
There she was, lying on a single bed in a room so small that there wasn't even space for a chair, and the first thing that struck him was that she was beautiful. She had lost too much weight - her long legs were too thin in greasy jeans and her upper body looked as frail as a bird's under a greasy workman's shirt - but her pale and famished face, with its great blue eyes and delicate, thin-lipped mouth, made her look like the heartbreaking debutante her mother might always have wanted her to be.
”
”
Richard Yates (Young Hearts Crying)
“
I find some small, twisted comfort in thinking that perhaps we used each other. Him, for a glimpse into what it would be like to live a life entirely different from the one he'd been raised to desire, and me for the steady diet of angst and emotional damage that seemed to make me better, sharper, like a sword against a whetstone.
I was his intellectual escape from a long parade of pretty, empty girls... and he was my drug of choice -- unhealthy, probably lethal, but ultimately so addictive it was hard to turn away.
The problem, of course, with this theory of mutual exploitation, is that it is the deepest of lies. There was nothing equal or mutual about the way we used each other. I barely scratched his surface while he sliced me limb from limb.
There's no comfort in that. None at all.
”
”
Julie Johnson (The Monday Girl (The Girl Duet, #1))
“
There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
There flowers no balm to sain him
From east of earth to west
That's lost for everlasting
The heart out of his breast.
Here by the labouring highway
With empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
Lie lost my heart and soul.
”
”
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
“
Willa came around to Finn's side of the bar. She was tiny, barely came up to his shoulder, but she was like a mother cat when riled. He knew better than to go toe to toe with her, especially when she was giving him The Look. But he wasn't in the mood. "No," he said.
"You don't even know what I'm going to say."
"You're going to say I'm being a stupid guy," Finn said. "But newsflash, I am a guy and sometimes we're stupid. Deal with it."
"I wasn't going to say that." She paused when he slid her a look and she sighed.
"Okay, fine, I was. But you are being stupid.
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
Her next words took me by surprise. I lay as still as I could, barely breathing, afraid that if I moved she would stop speaking her heart.
“My mom wanted six children. She only got me, and that sucks for her because I was a total weirdo.”
“You were not,” I said.
She twisted her head up to look at me.
“I used to line my lips in black eyeliner and sit cross-legged on the kitchen table … meditating.”
“Not that bad,” I said. “Crying out for attention.”
“Okay, when I was twelve I started writing letters to my birth mother because I wanted to be adopted.”
I shook my head. “Your childhood sucked, you wanted a new reality.”
She snorted air through her nose. “I thought a mermaid lived in my shower drain, and I used to call her Sarah and talk to her.”
“Active imagination,” I countered. She was becoming more insistent, her little body wriggling in my grip.
“I used to make paper out of dryer lint.”
“Nerdy.”
“I wanted to be one with nature, so I started boiling grass and drinking it with a little bit of dirt for sugar.”
I paused. “Okay, that’s weird.”
“Thank you!” she said. Then, she got serious again. “My mom just loved me through all of it.
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (Thief (Love Me with Lies, #3))
“
The little kids by the water threw their hands in the air and squealed, chasing each other in circles.
It was hard to believe that I’d ever been that small. That young. That happy and clueless. They had
pain ahead. Heartbreak. Loss. They didn’t know and I didn’t want them to – but at the same time, I
hated that I hadn’t known. I’d taken everything for granted – my mother, my friends in Alexandria,
playing hockey. I dreamed about the future because that’s what people persuade you to do when
you’re a kid, but that’s the biggest lie of all – that you can plan. Reality is, you have no fucking clue
what’s coming and neither do they
”
”
Tammara Webber (Breakable (Contours of the Heart, #2))
“
To move wild laughter in the throat of death?—
It cannot be, it is impossible.
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
Why, that’s the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. Then if sickly ears,
Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you and that fault withal.
But if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation
”
”
William Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost)
“
Readers are a dying species,” I said. “Like whales, partridges, wild animals in general. Borges calls them black swans, and maintains that good readers are now scarcer than good writers. He says reading is an activity subsequent to writing, more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. No,” I went on, “that’s not where the danger lies. Books make different impressions according to the state of mind you read them in. A book that struck you as banal on a first reading may dazzle you on a second simply because in the meantime you suffered some kind of heartbreak, or you took a journey, or you fell in love. In other words, something happened to you.
”
”
Gianfranco Calligarich (Last Summer in the City)
“
Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to forget
…But I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered... people who have faith were so lucky; you didn’t want to ruin it for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat suck individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you
Those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night.
The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief. The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next
At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that really didn’t exist
Fear, like heat, rises; it drifts up to the ceiling and when it falls down it pours out in a hot and horrible rain
True love, after all, could bind a man where he didn’t belong. It could wrap him in cords that were all but impossible to break
Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before
The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue, invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night
He looked at girls and saw only sweet little fuckboxes, there for him to use, no hearts involved, no souls, and, most assuredly no responsibilities.
Welcome to the real world. Herein is the place where no one can tell you whether or not you’ve done the right thing.
I could tell people anything I wanted to, and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever I said I was, well then, that’s who id be
The truths by which she has lived her life have evaporated, leaving her empty of everything except the faint blue static of her own skepticism. She has never been a person to question herself; now she questions everything
Something’s, are true no matter how hard you might try to bloc them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told
You were nothing more than a speck of dust, good-looking dust, but dust all the same
Some people needed saving
She doesn’t want to waste precious time with something as prosaic as sleep. Every second is a second that belongs to her; one she understands could well be her last
Why wait for anything when the world is so cockeyed and dangerous? Why sit and stare into the mirror, too fearful of what may come to pass to make a move?
At last she knows how it feels to take a chance when everything in the world is at stake, breathless and heedless and desperate for more
She’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully until the world is yours once more
”
”
Alice Hoffman (Blue Diary)
“
Craftsman Ilmarinen wept
Every evening for his woman,
Weeping sleepless through the nights
And fasting through the days;
In the early hours complaining,
Every morning sighing for her,
Lamenting for his lovely lost one,
For his dear one in the grave.
For a month he swung no hammer,
Did not touch the copper handle,
and the clinking forge was silent.
Said the craftsman Ilmarinen:
"I poor fellow, do not know
How to live or how survive;
Sitting up or lying down
Nights are long and time is tedious.
I am troubled, low in spirit.
'Lonely are the nights now,lonely
And the mornings dreary, dreary.
In my sleeping I am troubled,
But the waking is the saddest.
It's not for evening that I'm lonely,
Not for morning that I'm dreary,
Not for olden times lamenting,
But I'm lonely for my loved one,
Dreary for the missing of her,
Lamenting for my dark-browed lovely.
'Often in these days it happens,
Happens in my midnight dreaming
that I stretch my hand out touching,
touching something that is nothing...
”
”
Elias Lönnrot (The Kalevala)
“
Wow," she whispered. "Gorgeous."
"Yeah," he said, looking at her.
She laughed. "That's cheesy."
He grinned. "You liked it."
"No, I didn't."
He peered at her over his dark sunglasses, letting his gaze slip past her face.
She followed his line of sight and realized that her nipples were pressing eagerly against the thin white cotton of her shirt. "That's because I'm cold," she said and crossed her arms over her chest.
He laughed. "It's seventy five degrees."
"Downright chilly," she said, nose in the air.
Grinning, he reeled her in, and with Thor (the dog) protesting between them, he kissed the living daylights out of her.
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that’s rolled into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder just exactly what I’m supposed to do now.
”
”
Katherine Owen (This Much is True (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
She found a small spot where the grass was soft and dry and lay down, wondering how many years it had been since she had lain on soft grass to be alone to think. Around her the trees and wild flowers, with that oddly courteous air of natural things suddenly interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying, turned towards her with attention, as though, dull and imperceptive as she was, it was still necessary for them to be gentle to a creature so unfortunate as not to be rooted in the ground, forced to go from one place to another, heart-breakingly mobile. Idly Eleanor picked a wild daisy, which died in her fingers, and, lying on the grass, looked up into its dead face. There was nothing in her mind beyond an overwhelming wild happiness. She pulled at the daisy, and wondered, smiling at herself, What am I going to do? What am I going to do?
”
”
Shirley Jackson (The Haunting of Hill House)
“
He locks the door, stares down at the floor; she lies on the sofa, stares at the ceiling. They don't know if they have anything to say to each other anymore. Everything has a breaking point, and even though people always say that "a joy shared is a joy doubled," we seem to insist on believing that the opposite is true of sorrow. Perhaps that isn't actually the case. Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other's salvation; if they hold hands, they'll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other's broken hearts becomes unbearable.
”
”
Fredrik Backman (Us Against You (Beartown, #2))
“
You cannot wage a sustained ideological assault on your own civilization without grave consequences. We are approaching the end of the Anglo-American moment, and the eclipse of the powers that built the modern world...Cecil Rhodes..said that to be born a British subject was to win first prize in the lottery of life. One the eve of the Great Ward, in his play "Heartbreak House", Bernard Shaw turned the thought around to taunt a ruling class too smug and self-absorbed to see what was coming. "Do you think," he wrote, "the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it?....In our time, to be born a citizen of the United States is to win first prize in the lottery of life, and, as the Britons did, too many Americans assume it will always be so. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of America because you were born in it? Great convulsions lie ahead, and at the end of it we may be in a post-Anglosphere world.
”
”
Mark Steyn (After America: Get Ready for Armageddon)
“
Black Girls… Until you get enough of what you’re going through, no matter what advice a person gives you, you’ll continue to go through the same thing. Constant arguing. Constant fighting. Constant lies. Constant disappointments. Constant emotional rollercoaster. Constant heartbreak. Constant headaches. Constant threats. Constantly fighting for his attention and love. Constantly looking through his phone. Constantly sneaking through his personal belongings. Constantly arguing and/or fighting with other women over who’s supposed to be YOUR mate. Secretly checking up on him due to a lack of trust. Listen, NOBODY is worth your inner peace! What I’ve listed above is NOT a relationship. It’s a toxic mess. So, what are you going to do?
”
”
Stephanie Lahart
“
Yet she lays out this family plan the way you’d say, “After yoga, I’ll go to Lia’s for the mani-special and then wax on about hairstyles and hemlines until dinner.”
If I were gifted at making long-term plans, which by now we all know I’m not, and if I was at all hopeful, which we all know that I can never be, although it crosses my mind that it’s entirely possible these are all just huge, f*&king, temporary setbacks and nothing more, even though it’s been going on for over three years now, since Holly died, and I met Lincoln Presley. Events that could be construed as somehow inevitably related. Yes, perhaps there’s an expiration date on the said pursuit of unhappiness. Perhaps, things will eventually go my way after I actually discover what that way is supposed to be.
”
”
Katherine Owen (This Much is True (Truth in Lies, #1))
“
My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn't just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can't effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it.
We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. The ways in which I have been hurt - and have hurt others - are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us.
Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I'd always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we're shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.
We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.
I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We've become so fearful and vengeful that we've thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak - not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we've pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we've legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we've allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We've submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.
But simply punishing the broken - walking away from them or hiding them from sight - only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.
I frequently had difficult conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations - over the things they'd done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar. If you take something that doesn't belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things that you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.
”
”
Bryan Stevenson (Just Mercy)
“
With her hands still fisted in his shirt, she gave a gentle tug until he bent enough that she could kiss him softly. And then not so softly.
“What was that for?” he asked when she pulled free, his voice sexy low and gruff now.
“For being the kind of guy who can admit he has emotions.”
He cupped her face. “We don’t have to tell anyone, right?”
She smiled. “It’ll be our secret.” But then her smile faded because she wasn’t good at secrets.
Or maybe she was too good at them . . . “I’m not helpless,” she said. “I want you to know that.”
“I do know it.” He paused, looking a little irritated again. “Mostly.”
“Good,” she said. “Now that’s settled, you should know, the caveman thing you just pulled . . . it turned me on a little bit.”
He slid her a look. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Looking a little less like he was spoiling for a fight, his hands went to her hips and he pulled her in tighter.
What the hell was she doing? Clearly, she wasn’t equipped to stay strong, and who could? The guy was just too damn potent. Too visceral. Testosterone and pheromones leaked off of him. She dropped her head to his chest. “Ugh. You’re being . . . you.”
“Was that in English?”
“This is all your fault.”
“Nope. Definitely not English.”
“You’re being all hot and sexy, dammit,” she said. She banged her head on his chest a few times. “And I can’t seem to . . . not notice said hotness and sexiness.”
He smiled. “You want me again.”
Again. Still . . . She tossed up her hands. “You wear your stupid sexiness on your sleeve and you don’t even know it.
”
”
Jill Shalvis (Sweet Little Lies (Heartbreaker Bay, #1))
“
It was Day Three, Freshman Year, and I was a little bit lost in the school library,looking for a bathroom that wasn't full of blindingly shiny sophomores checking their lip gloss.
Day Three.Already pretty clear on the fact that I would be using secondary bathrooms for at least the next three years,until being a senior could pass for confidence.For the moment, I knew no one,and was too shy to talk to anyone. So that first sight of Edward: pale hair that looked like he'd just run his hands through it, paint-smeared white shirt,a half smile that was half wicked,and I was hooked.
Since, "Hi,I'm Ella.You look like someone I'd like to spend the rest of my life with," would have been totally insane, I opted for sitting quietly and staring.Until the bell rang and I had to rush to French class,completely forgetting to pee.
Edward Willing.Once I knew his name, the rest was easy.After all,we're living in the age of information. Wikipedia, iPhones, 4G ntworks, social networking that you can do from a thousand miles away.The upshot being that at any given time over the next two years, I could sit twenty feet from him in the library, not saying a word, and learn a lot about him.ENough, anyway, for me to become completely convinced that the Love at First Sight hadn't been a fluke.
It's pretty simple.Edward matched four and a half of my If My Prince Does, In Fact, Come Someday,It Would Be Great If He Could Meet These Five Criteria.
1. Interested in art. For me, it's charcoal. For Edward, oil paint and bronze. That's almost enough right there. Nice lips + artist= Ella's prince.
2. Not afraid of love. He wrote, "Love is one of two things worth dying for.I have yet to decide on the second."
3.Or of telling the truth. "How can I believe that other people say if I lie to them?"
4.Hot. Why not?I can dream.
5.Daring. Mountain climbing, cliff dying, defying the parents. Him, not me. I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including heights, convertibles, moths, and those comedians everyone loves who stand onstage and yell insults at the audience.
5, subsection a. Daring enough to take a chance on me.Of course, in the end, that No. 5a is the biggie. And the problem. No matter how muuch I worshipped him,no matter how good a pair we might have been,it was never, ever going to happen. To be fair to Edward,it's not like he was given an opportunity to get to know me. I'm not stupid.I know there are a few basic truths when it comes to boys and me.
Truth: You have to talk to a boy-really talk,if you want him to see past the fact that you're not beautiful.
Truth: I'm not beautiful. Or much of a conversationalist.
Truth: I'm not entirely sure that the stuff behind the not-beautiful is going to be all that alluring, either.
And one written-in-stone, heartbreaking truth about this guy.
Truth:Edward Willing died in 1916.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)