Quotes About Emotions

I had discovered, or rediscoverd, that crying is a pleasure—that it can be a pleasure beyond all reckoning if your head is pressed in your mother's waist and her hands are on your back, and if she happens to be wearing clean clothes.

It was like watching someone you hate getting mugged: three seconds of hard-core violence, and when it was over you just wanted it to happen again.

Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world.

I can't be alone in this, can I? And, of course, you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Therefore you keep the crocheted owl given to you by your second-youngest sister and accidentally on purpose drop the mug that reads "Owl Love You Always" and was sent by someone who clearly never knew you to begin with.

It's not that I don't have opinions about these things. I just don't feel they're in any way special. Sure, I follow the news. I read the papers and listen to the radio, but I'm not privy to any inside information. When it comes to politics, all I can offer is emotion. My perspective might be slightly different, but so is anyone's when they live overseas.

Be ye mad, woman?

I sat him down the other night and explained as gently as possible that I do not care about ice-skating. I do not care about Michelle Kwan or Tara Lipinski and would be happy if I never hear the words triple lutz or double axel again. I told him that on Friday and walked into the kitchen an hour later to find him in tears. "It's heartbreaking," he said, watching his beloved skaters.

For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac, which is one of the few things I'm actually not.

You'd think my mother could have seen the difference between the sunny, likable her and the dark one who'd call late at night. I could hear the ice cubes in her glass rushing forth whenever she took a sip. In my youth, when she'd join my father for a drink after work—"Just one, I have to get dinner on the table"—that was a happy sound. Now it was like a trigger being cocked.

You kids might think you're close, but just wait until your father and I are gone, and you're left to divide up our property.

The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing. No credit is given for distinguishing between these two very different emotions. I fear snakes. I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I'm comfortable with it, and no community outreach program will change my mind.

One day she'd throw a dish at you, and the next she'd create a mosaic made of the shards.

That's the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

We're not a horrible couple, but we have our share of fights, the type that can start with a misplaced sock and suddenly be about everything. "I haven't liked you since 2002," he hissed during a recent argument over which airport security line was moving the fastest. This didn't hurt me so much as confuse me. "What happened in 2002?" I asked.

When I'm told such stories, it's all I can do to hold back my feelings of jealousy. An Ethiopian slaughterhouse. Some people have all the luck.

I felt my eyes tear up, and as my vision blurred I considered all the people who had fought against this and thought, Take that, assholes.

I pulled back because I am not a hugger. Never have been. When someone wraps their arms around me, I shut down and stand there with my eyes closed, waiting for it to be over.

For my fifty dollars, I want to leave the doctor's office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac

It was as if I'd learned to grieve by watching television:

Nick Papanides," I say, spitting into the sink. "Let me tell you a little something, Mister. You can rot in Hell for all I care. You can …" I watch my saliva clinging to the rim of the basin and wonder where the bubbles come from. Is that air or are we all naturally carbonated?

Lisa was not a daughter now but just another female unable to control her wildly shifting emotions.

looked at her picture on Facebook and thought, Of course.

As it was, I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me.

I felt the hatred of my classmates and slunk down in my seat. Then