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ba305be He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other. romance misery obsession W. Somerset Maugham
06197bd "I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived." misery Neil Gaiman
e2729c1 The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. death life inspirational boredom misery Michel Houellebecq
640a893 Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory. persistence hurts stephen-king novels requirements talent misery remember scars writers memory stories Stephen King
0d9fab8 Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be. pain faith living positivity happiness hope life love stoicism misery T.H. White
8e57f67 Only you could be more important than what I wanted...what I needed. What I want and what I need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again. misery Stephenie Meyer
c3a4bfb I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, . No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships--gone. She went on living, but with a as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths--until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about. family anonymity born-again clean-slate nabokov signs-and-symbols extinction nazis genocide rwanda rwandan-genocide germans misery short-stories survivors Christopher Hitchens
6236395 It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be. world life van-helsing misery laugh Bram Stoker
a8d1424 You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you. misery Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5d332f2 ...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of . Let each man hope and believe what he can. evolution profound science beneficence omnipotent biology tolerance design evidence misery isaac-newton newton Charles Darwin
f737c21 Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom. meaning life misery Voltaire
8347750 "But somebody else had spoken Snape's name, quite softly. "Severus . . ." The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading. Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face. "Severus . . . please . . ." Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. " " A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape's wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry's scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight." pain death killing-curse severus-snape dumbledore misery sad J.K. Rowling
8eabe3e A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. moroseness subconscious misery P.G. Wodehouse
8eb2972 wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness madness tessa-gray clockwork-prince infernal-devices will-herondale misery Cassandra Clare
d3ce0ba "Magnus rolled onto his back and put his feet up on the arm of the sofa. "What do you care if Alec's miserable?" "What do I care?" Jace said, so loudly that Chairman Meow rolled off the couch and landed on the floor. "Of course I care about Alec; he's my best friend, my parabatai. And he's unhappy. And so are you, by the look of things. Takeout containers everywhere, you haven't done anything to fix up the place, your cat looks dead--" "He's not dead." dead-cat parabatai misery Cassandra Clare
eb18d70 If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day--the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we're miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn't seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we're up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. enlightenment mark-nepo joy happiness perspective misery Mark Nepo
2f7df75 And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. people watches misery Douglas Adams
32a560a There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had. life misery Raymond Carver
9568e05 Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. freedom obstacle misery Elizabeth Gilbert
9023e56 Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux. Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that horrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang began to howl. fang horcrux dumbledore misery J.K. Rowling
e32e40e The art of our necessities is strange That can make vile things precious. necessity need misery William Shakespeare
1e0b573 One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It's not like if you're in Los Angeles, where everyone's so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and physical health that if they sense you're down, they shun you. Also, all that sunshine is a cruel joke when you're depressed. In New York, even in your misery, you feel like you belong. depression mindy-kaling cheerfulness los-angeles misery new-york Mindy Kaling
64b5cf1 They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeling. windmills quixote stone misery misfortune lunatic insane Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
0bb49cf The Aristocrat The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away). They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new, And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do; He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate, Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait; He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky, And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf; But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself. O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away, And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever; The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever; There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain, There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain; There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door, Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more, Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark, And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark: And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird; For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word. misery devil G.K. Chesterton
83aafa3 Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer. misery Jodi Picoult
8b0e4c3 "That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar." "Titanic City" was born. It's the song, they said. No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. It's the sex, they whispered. Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo. "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead." war misery Khaled Hosseini
3f6f9f4 People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery. misery Graham Greene
963eee0 Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you. life krapp play misery Samuel Beckett
3464c43 The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces. misery Irvine Welsh
1e433cc "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived." misery miserable Neil Gaiman
1b83f20 ...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them. sleep suicide earth escape depression sorrow fear mother misery terror horror Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5bb9e7b "All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart." love misery James Baldwin
1160476 I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them. misery Franz Kafka
45d1f4e Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery? life gray-book white misery Mary Balogh
de1c914 "You're innocent until proven guilty," Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones... but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be... maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. "We wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed." The 1960's and 1970's were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend's house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn't exist... she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn't fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought... she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles... she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other... the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now. Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light." earth grief loss death convenient old-school reporter taxi retro cape-breton nova-scotia stuck moving digital medications leaving-home environment canada cars stop crying gone misery trapped lonely sad crazy insane dying mental-illness nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
882366a "If I have become my father, then I shall have my father's blade. Thorn is my dragon, and a thorn he shall be to all enemies. It is only right, then, that I should wield the sword, misery. Misery and Thorn, a fit match. Besides, Zar'roc should have gone to Morzan's eldest son, not his youngest. It is mine by right of birth." A cold pit formed in Eragon's stomach. It can't be. A cruel smile appeared on Murtagh's face. "I never told you my mother's name, did I? And you never told my yours. I'll say it now: Selena." morzan zar-roc eldest murtagh misery Christopher Paolini
3a95f92 I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. humanity misery Victor Hugo
c4ceedd I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her. There was an instability in it, a sickness. I was seeing things that weren't there. I was only one step away from some trailer park loner stalking a girl he'd spotted in the mall. For the truth of it was: Pippa and I saw each other maybe twice a year; we e-mailed and texted, though with no great regularity; when she was in town we loaned each other books and went to the movies; we were friends; nothing more. My hopes for a relationship with her were wholly unreal, whereas my ongoing misery, and frustration, were an all-too-horrible reality. Was groundless, hopeless, unrequited obsession any way to waste the rest of my life? grief loss relationship reality past hope delusional delusional-love unreal loner delusion save hunger stalking misery hopeless frustration obsession waste unrequited-love sickness Donna Tartt
fd0661d (Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child. sex friends fear death proust-questionnaire impotence mothers idleness proust misery children Christopher Hitchens
7f06cc1 They all know it is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery. happiness omelas misery Ursula K. Le Guin
a092c3d So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it. suffering human-misery melville pity misery Herman Melville
51d2617 "Tavi spent an eternity in misery, longing for death to bring sweet release from the unrelenting torment. The others gathered at the side of his bunk on the ship, keeping a deathwatch over him. "I don't see what all the drama is about," Demos said, his quiet voice filled with habitual disinterst. "He's seasick. It will pass."~Captain's Fury" longing-for-death misery Jim Butcher
bd774ef Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them. happiness misery luck Victor Hugo
85ed068 The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell. war bitterness soldier misery pride Steven Pressfield
97ae343 "I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." *Fantine" life musical misery Victor Hugo
49bef17 "...Do you think there's somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?" Mandy blurted out. "You mean when you die, where will you end up?" Alecto asked her. "...I wouldn't know... back to whatever void there is, I suppose." "I've thought about it... every living thing dies alone, it'll be lonely after death," Mandy sighed sadly. "That freaks me out, does it scare you?" "I don't want to be alone," Alecto replied wearily. "We won't be, though. We'll be dead, so we'll just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness." "I don't want to be any of that either though," Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. "When we die, we'll still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything'll just be nothing!" "You're real though, at least that's something," Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly." time grief heaven depression death imagination sadness truth frightened disturbing grim spooky nirvana funeral purgatory void misery scary kill dead lost dying nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
0856dc4 The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence. experiences loneliness misery Nicole Krauss
55afa62 He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness. heart love thunder misery voice George MacDonald
6a056bf Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances. pain happier-times middlemarch intellectual misery George Eliot
62bb2e1 I don't think I can marry, I'm not fit for it, I'm not real enough. That's the trouble. I'm a puppet that's realised what's wrong with itself and it's . I'm propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I'm propped up crying in a corner. metaphor left-out unloved the-message-to-the-planet iris-murdoch outsider single misery sad Iris Murdoch
7ff529b Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race. misery Victor Hugo
bb11644 For it is discomfort's own essence to be near a man and to feel him in torture of misery, to feel with him the very pain of the misery, and yet to be unable to help. pain-of-the-misery help misery Richard Llewellyn
092a5bf And the child--your child--was born there in the midst of misery. It was a deadly place: strange, everything was strange, we women lying there were strange to each other, lonely and hating one another out of misery, the same torment in that crowded ward full of chloroform and blood, screams and groans. poverty letter-from-an-unknown-woman maternity-ward misery Stefan Zweig
737a929 Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care... Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who at lucky! As for the other men, stagnant night is upon them. life lucky misery Victor Hugo
374a2b7 Let me sleep at last. I've had misery enough in my life. You said there was nowhere to go to. There is death to go to. I've had misery enough in my life. sleep escape desperate the-black-prince iris-murdoch suicidal misery Iris Murdoch
38410de When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice, the colors and patterns of what's left behind do not change,' wrote my neighbor and friend, the poet Jane Hirschfield, after she visited an old friend suffering from Alzheimer's disease in a nursing home. And so it was with my father. His mind did not melt evenly into undistinguishable lumps, like a dissolving sand castle. It was ravaged selectively, like Tintern Abbey, the Cistercian monastery in northern Wales suppressed in 1531 by King Henry VIII in his split with the Church of Rome. Tintern was turned over to a nobleman, its stained-glass windows smashed, its roof tiles taken up and relaid in village houses. Holy artifacts were sold to passing tourists. Religious statues turned up in nearby gardens. At least one interior wall was dismantled to build a pigsty. I've seen photographs of the remains that inspired Wordsworth: a Gothic skeleton, soaring and roofless, in a green hilly landscape. Grass grows in the transept. The vanished roof lets in light. The delicate stone tracery of its slim, arched quatrefoil windows opens onto green pastures where black-and-white cows graze. Its shape is beautiful, formal, and mysterious. After he developed dementia, my father was no longer useful to anybody. But in the shelter of his broken walls, my mother learned to balance her checkbook, and my heart melted and opened. Never would I wish upon my father the misery of his final years. But he was sacred in his ruin, and I took from it the shards that still sustain me. mind sacred tintern-abbey ruin misery Katy Butler
7103481 "If you were me you'd do the right thing, help your friends, because you're not a coward," Mandy sighed sadly. "I covered up a murder because I was scared to go to jail and I did the wrong thing... well, now's my chance to do the right thing, to save someone's life, because I don't want you to die." "Save someone's life? I'm no one," Alecto laughed morbidly. "A hundred and twelve years is definitely way too long to have survived. You'd be wasting your time and risking your own life...." "This is my life," Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other water in the world." -- suicide grief murder loss wrong death friendship disturbance moral-values seaside imaginary-friend cape-breton nova-scotia coward jail rescue help friend misery crime scary right morals ocean dying Rebecca McNutt
c08f47b "<>" memories death sadness life dela i-heart-you-you-haunt-me lisa-schroeder funeral goodbye black colors misery Lisa Schroeder
e7c0f3e You talk of freedom -- I've never had it! I've been lonely and miserable and in despair, and you want me to consent to all that all over again! freedom the-message-to-the-planet iris-murdoch misery lonely Iris Murdoch
997aa82 Some of my favorite songs: 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' by Neil Young; 'Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me' by the Smiths; 'Call Me' by Aretha Franklin; 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' by anybody. And then there's 'Love Hurts' and 'When Love Breaks Down' and 'How Can You Mend a Broken Heart' and 'The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness' and 'She's Gone' and 'I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself 'and . . . some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives. music misery Nick Hornby
acd4feb What came first _ the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? music misery Nick Hornby
d2a31ee You see, I'm not mad, I suffer from depression. It's not like ordinary misery. It's like dying of boredom. It's . madness depression the-green-knight iris-murdoch misery Iris Murdoch
8857847 Before you are much older...you will have policemen here to stay. A magistrate will be next. Then perhaps even a jail. And the counterparts of those things are hunger and want, and misery and idleness. The night is coming. Watch and pray. want policemen jail idleness misery Richard Llewellyn
9ffe5c8 But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit. life misery fortune Umberto Eco
1787c69 I will not dream anymore, you said. I will not set myself up for the pain. But then your team made the playoffs, or you saw a movie, or a billboard glowing dusky orange and advertising Aruba, or a girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to a woman you'd dated in high school-- a woman you'd loved and lost-- danced above you with shimmering eyes, and you said, fuck it, let's dream just one more time. pain hope misery Dennis Lehane
91d6d89 You Mabden seem to think that happiness must be bought with misery... It is not easy for Vadhagh to understand that. We believe -- believed -- that happiness was a natural condition of reasoning beings. reason misery Michael Moorcock
ce92df0 When people get rich, they shed their skin-in-the-game-driven experiential mechanism. They lose control of their preferences, substituting constructed preferences for their own, complicating their lives unnecessarily, triggering their own misery. wealth rich misery Nassim Nicholas Taleb
1486ee4 !Ay misero de mi, y ay infelice! Apurar, cielos, pretendo, ya que me tratais asi, que delito cometi contra vosotros naciendo. Aunque si naci, ya entiendo que delito he cometido; bastante causa ha tenido vuestra justicia y rigor, pues el delito mayor del hombre es haber nacido. Solo quisiera saber para apurar mis desvelos -dejando a una parte, cielos, el delito del nacer-, ?que mas os pude ofender, para castigarme mas? ?No nacieron los demas? Pues si los demas nacieron, ?que privilegios tuvieron que no yo goce jamas? man privileges misery Pedro Calderón de la Barca
a28d485 "It occurred to us that she and the girls read secret signs of misery in cloud formations, that despite the discrepancies in their ages something timeless communicated itself between them, as though she were advising the girls in her mumbling Greek, "Don't waste your time on life." -- suicide life jeffrey-eugenides the-virgin-suicides misery Jeffrey Eugenides
bfd58d2 "Alecto... what do you think would happen if people found out about you? Your abilities, your life, Mearth's super 8 films, those powers of yours... how would they react?" "I don't know," said Alecto, "but ordinary people like a show, especially when it's a disturbing one. They enjoy seeing misery... probably because it allows them to pretend that they themselves are not so miserable, too. Also, they would probably find out about you, how you know about Personifications, how you saw the films... they would put us in cages and throw peanuts at us, I guess." "All joking aside, Alecto...." "Who is joking, Mandy Valems?" humor peanuts psychokinesis psychokinetic pyrokinetic super-8 super-8-film super-eight telekinesis throw pyrokinesis ordinary show film powers misery joke Rebecca McNutt
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