Quote #2483 from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Fri, 2010-02-26 17:11 — GabrielleYou made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too.
Quote #2457 from Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
Wed, 2010-01-20 22:11 — GabrielleHe was frozen. He woke to see the train disappearing away from his body like a vein. He continued to stand hiding behind the mail wagon. Help me. He was scared of everybody. He didn't want to meet anybody he knew again, ever in his life.
Quote #2378 from Skin Game: A Memoir by Caroline Kettlewell
Sat, 2009-10-10 06:45 — GabrielleThe fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds.
Quote #2351 from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Sun, 2009-09-20 16:08 — GabrielleThe so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Quote #2346 from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Tue, 2009-08-18 18:10 — lucy.Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
Quote #2247 from House of Incest by Anaïs Nin
Sat, 2009-05-23 12:58 — GabrielleI am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. Don't say anything, because I see that you understand me, and I am afraid of your understanding. I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe. I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have to share my kingdom with you.
Quote #2244 from A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
Mon, 2009-05-11 07:32 — glaciatorA man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants them to know just how badly they've all let him down.
Quote #2220 from Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Thu, 2009-04-23 00:22 — GabrielleOutside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing. Every power poured its treasures on his head, and his hand lay there on the back of the sofa, as he had seen his hand lie when he was bathing, floating, on the top of the waves, while far away on the shore he heard dogs barking and barking far away. Fear no more, says the heart in the body; fear no more.
Quote #2211 from Hardboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto
Wed, 2009-04-22 23:17 — GabrielleUltimately, though, it's living people that frighten me the most. It's always seemed to me that nothing could be scarier than a person, because as dreadful places can be, they're still just places; and no matter how awful ghosts might seem, they're just dead people. I always thought that the most terrifying things anyone could ever think up were the things living people came up with.
Quote #2082 from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Thu, 2009-03-19 14:30 — GabrielleThe next day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, and yet indifferent to life itself.
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