Quotes About Emotions

God, was I going to have another day of painful thoughts jumping me every time I relaxed? The obvious solution—to just not relax—was kind of sucking.

Maybe handling her memory every day for five years had made it fade, like the mortal thing it was.

Lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier.

I was so often silent angry with Hammett for making the situation hard on me, not knowing then that the dying do not, should not, be asked to think about anything but their own minute of running time.

Grief, I began to see, is gratitude turned inside out.

Nell and Fen had chased away my thoughts of suicide. But what had they left me with? Fierce desires, a great tide of feeling of which I could make little sense, an ache that seemed to have no name but want. I want. Intransitive. No object. It was the opposite of wanting to die. But it was scarcely more bearable.

But right on the heels of that feeling, that suspicion that all is not yet lost, comes the urge to tell my mother, tell her that I am okay today, that I have felt something close to happiness, that I might still be capable of feeling happy. She will want to know that. But I can't tell her. That's the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can't tell her that I'm okay.

I wanted her and no one else to tell me the story of how she died.

I look back on those days and it feels gluttonous, all that time and love and life ahead, no bees in my body and my mother on the other end of the line.

My voice is nothing special, but when your mother tells you something about yourself, even if you've coaxed it out of her, it's hard not to always believe it. I sing to the geese. And I feel her. It's different from remembering her or yearning for her. I feel her near me. I don't know if she is the geese or the river or the sky or the moon. I don't know if she is outside of me or inside of me, but she is here. I feel her love for me. I feel my love reach her. A brief, easy exchange.

I'm both the sad person and the person wanting to comfort the sad person.

That night at Gertie's when she asked me if I preferred to be the one who loved slightly more or loved slightly less. More, I said. Not this time, she said in my ear. I am the one who will always love more. I didn't say, But I love without needing to own. Because I didn't know the difference then.

When you die, she thought now, you can no longer give love. You can't give love anymore. She wouldn't be able to love her children. It struck her suddenly as the very worst thing about death, worse than not being able to breathe or laugh or kiss. A kind of existential suffocation, to not be able to give her children her love anymore.

Most women like to fuss around a wound of your past, pick at the thin scab, comfort you after they'd made it sting. Not Nell.

The air between us crackles, as it does when you speak of your beloved dead. But it's hard to know what to say next.

Adults hid their pain, their fears, their failure, but adolescents hid their happiness, as if to reveal it would risk its loss.

I'm usually better at protecting myself from this kind of thing." "From heartbreak?" "Yeah." My throat is closing. "I can usually get out of the way before it hits me straight on." "That's not really heartbreak then, is it?

When I was visiting her a few years ago she hugged me and said, 'Tomorrow after you leave I will stand here at this window and remember that yesterday you were right here with me.' And now she's dead and I have that feeling all the time, no matter where I stand.

Soon Paula would begin complaining that he didn't understand her, didn't appreciate her, didn't love her enough, when in fact he loved her so much his heart often felt shredded by it. But people always wanted words for all that roiled inside you.

That's the wall I always slam into on a good morning like this. My mother will be worrying about me, and I can't tell her that I'm okay.

He has called to ask you out on a date. Do not mention a dead mother.

I meet Silas at the movie theater on Church Street. We choose seats close to the front. He's wearing a striped wool hat that he keeps on the whole movie, and our bodies never touch. I've never been more aware of not touching someone in my life.

It's not here anymore," he said. "What?" "What happened." "Then where is it?" "It's gone. It's over. You can't find it, stroke it, coo over it. Time has stolen it away like it fucking steals everything. In rare instances, like yours, that can be a good thing.

She wondered how other people adjusted to vacations. It was such an unpleasant feeling, like gunning a car in neutral.