Quotes from Douglas Kennedy

Clipa… E un loc mult supraapreciat.

Can we always really look forward, as everyone endlessly advises us to do? Or do we have to hold on to certain key vestiges of our past- as painful, as terrible as they might be- as a way of understanding that there are certain things in life that change us so radically that they stay with us forever? Can we really close the door on that which still haunts us?

If there is an abiding theme in The Pursuit of Happiness it is the idea that you come into the world already shaped by other people's past histories. How you then grapple with everything life throws in your path—and how your own sense of ethics dictates so much about your dealings with life's larger questions—determines so much. "Character

And yet there she was. The possible felicitous future. The hope we all crave. Can we do this? Can we somehow find a way of making each other happy? And, in turn, remind ourselves: we are not alone in the dark. It's what we all want. Isn't it?

Because I was educated in the idea that fear or anxiety was something you didn't share with those nearest and dearest to you. As my dad used to tell me: Never let anyone know if you're about to shit in your pants.

secrecy that eventually landed him in jail? We are not just the sum total of everything that has happened to us, but also a testament to the way we have interpreted all that has crossed our path. The music of chance intersecting with the maddening complexities of choice – and how, in the wake of bad judgment and self-sabotage, we so often rewrite the scenario to create one that we can live with.

How soon "not now" becomes "never".

Compartmentalize. Accept the Cartesian logic of two separate universes within one life. Accept the contradictory tug between familial responsibility and the illusion of freedom. Accept that – as Dumas said – the chains of marriage are heavy and, as such, they often need to be carried by several people. But never allow the two realms to meet – and never admit anything. Whereas you, Harry, confessed everything … didn't you?

mon tour viendra de quitter la scène.

I wanted to get it all down on paper; a record of what happened----just in case something did happen to me---- and to try and convince myself that I was not living in a state of permanent delusion. But why should you accept this story as given? It's just a story----my story. And like all stories, it isn't, in the pure sense of the word, true. It's just my version of the truth. Which means it is----and isn't----true at all.

The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.

We can rarely tell others what we really think about them--not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves.

We can never change the story that made us what we are. It's a story accumulated by the manifold complexities-its capacity for astonishment and horror, for sanguinity and hopelessness, for pellucid light and the most profound darkness. We are what happened to us. And we carry everywhere all that has shaped us-all that we lacked, all that we wanted but never got; all that we got but never wanted; all that was found and lost.

Wie bald 'nicht jetz' 'nie' wird. How soon 'not now' becomes 'never'.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

We all talk about how much we hate lies. Yet we prefer, so often, to be lied to....because it allows us to dodge all those painful truths we'd rather not hear.

All our stories are simultaneously unique and desperately similar, aren't they?

There is much to be said for solitude.

But the strangest of all sensations is the moment after you have been freed of the baby--and the baby of you--and you are handed this tiny shriveled creature to hold for the first time... and you feel a mixture of unbelievable instant love and desperate fear.

hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time

There were moments when I felt seriously unhinged; when I was convinced that I would never, ever recover from what had happened, when it was absolutely clear to me that life from this point on would be constant agony ...

we seemed to possess a similar worldview: slightly jaded, fiercely independent ...

Once you've crossed over into that realm of nothingness, your story only really stays in the minds of those closest to you. And when they too vanish...

We all end up ruing everything. It's the nature of this thing we call 'our condition.' Could, but didn't...Wanted to, but stopped myself...All the damn statements of regret we can never dodge.