Quotes About Emotions

Why do these people behave the way they do? To stay in control. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, irrational people—especially those who are firmly in the grip of crazy—are terrified of losing control.

When you understand irrational people's M.O.s, it'll be easier for you to realize that their weeping, coldness, whining, withdrawal, or attack-dog behavior isn't really about you. Instead, it's about them and their need to feel in control.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears." —FRANCIS BACON

An ounce of apology is worth a pound of resentment and a ton of "acting out by underperforming.

This proves I'm totally worthless" leads to despair and loss of confidence, while "I can't stand when I act that way" can lead to wisdom and determination.

Your brain has three layers that evolved over millions of years: a primitive reptile layer, a more evolved mammal layer, and a final primate layer. They all interconnect, but in effect they often act like three different brains—and they're often at war with each other.

The middle mammal brain is the seat of your emotions. (Call it your inner drama queen.) It's where powerful feelings—love, joy, sadness, anger, grief, jealousy, pleasure—arise.

Sometimes we get sad about things and we don't like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don't know why we are sad, so we say we aren't sad but we really are.

I like dogs. You always know what a dog is thinking. It has four moods. Happy, sad, cross and concentrating. Also, dogs are faithful and they do not tell lies because they cannot talk.

I find people confusing.

What they failed to teach you at school was that the whole business of being human just got messier and more complicated as you got older. You could tell the truth, be polite, take everyone's feelings into consideration and still have to deal with other people's shit. At nine or ninety.

Everything was shit & everything was beautiful. They were both hunted by the dead.

Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.

A lot of people hate heroes. I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They're afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain 'cool' for the rest of their lives, until they're dead—then they're really cool.

According to this new evidence, most of our thinking (including our moral judgment) is not a pristinely rational process in the traditional sense, and therefore reasoning is not a bloodless, emotionless, purely formal logical process. Instead, we need an intact and functioning emotional apparatus in order for our reason to have any possibility of operating appropriately in a given situation.

it's usually a bad one, a negative thought, but we have

The audience cheered. I died a little inside. The rest is history.

Orcas and some other large whales have spindle neurons in their brains. These are cells that process emotion humans thought existed only in apes and us. Spindle neurons have been called the cells that make us human. They're the part of the brain that deals with complex emotions like love, guilt, grief and even embarrassment. Since these are the cells that allow us to feel deeply, isn't it likely they do the same for orcas?

When faced with life's most challenging events, it's okay not to be okay.

But that's what nonfiction is, people. Shitty feelings and encounters with death.

It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot...or cosmic rays or a power ring...Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.

The heart is a muscle, and you strengthen muscles by using them. The more I lead with my heart, the stronger it gets.

We do not see with our eyes nor with our minds, we only see through the feelings of our Emotions."-Mark Miller

Wen grinned and I felt a warm glow and an odd dizzy sensation. And then I remembered something my dad once wrote me about falling in love. He said the phrase was apt because falling is exactly what it can feel like, as if you've finally allowed yourself to let go of some safety bar you didn't even know you were clinging to, and suddenly you find yourself tumbling towards the exciting unknown.