Quotes About Reflection

I open the journal now and pick up the pen, but I can't bring myself to write a word.

He didn't feel the need to have his life figured out. But the truth was that he didn't want to deal with it.

I know I still cause harm, probably a ton of it no matter what I do. And it kills me, it just kills me, that maybe the best you can ever do is cause less harm. But there you have it.

the Olympian vantage point that time provides:

Then it wouldn't be long before they all found themselves shocked and sad to be fully grown into their thicker, finalized adult selves, with almost no chance for reinvention.

A high school play was a time of high emotion and meaning; if you were in a play, you felt as if the play mattered. The success or failure of any production seemed like a real reflection on you personally.

Ce se întâmpl? în Belzhar, orice ar fi, nu las? nicio urm? în lumea real?. Nicio umbr?, niciun fel de reziduu.

In the past, people appreciated artwork. Now artwork appreciates?

know you have other things to think about, other people who want your time, which I know you probably have to dole out really, really carefully, preserving yourself. Self-preservation is as important as generosity.

all the stars out there, she thought, and all the worlds those stars existed in; and all the non-stars too, the strivers, everyone worried about their own careers, their own trajectories, how it looked, what it meant, what other people thought of them. It was just too much to take in; it was just so sickening and unnecessary. Leave success and fame and money and an extraordinary

Most of the time I'm like, 'Why do I have to share a gender with you, you piece of shit?' It's like when you have a bad relative who has the same last name.

The train came, and Jules Jacobson stepped on and thought: I am the loneliest person in this subway car.

What you knew, felt and wanted now, and the way you could love now, had a long valley of seriousness running through it that had always perhaps been there, though to a lesser extent.

To be lost in a novel meant you were not lost in your own life.

And that's acceptable to you?" Faith took a second. "I always weigh it," she said. "Like with Ecuador. I'm ashamed of what happened. But those young women are free and presumably out of danger. I have to weigh that too, don't I? That's what it's about, this life. The weighing.

I want to not think so much about what I want, and what I missed out on. I want to think about other things—other people, in other places even. I am so tired of all the little ironic in-jokes, and reciting lines from TV shows and movies and books. Everything from the . . . circumscribed world. I want an uncircumscribed world.

But the truth is, you can rarely undo things. This is what you realize after one of your parents dies.

Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?

Suddenly,I want to hold the whole night close to my chest and I decide it is mine alone

You spend a long time waiting for life to start—the past year or two filled with all these firsts, everything new and terrifying and significant—and then it does start and you realize it isn't what you'd expected, or asked for.

If you didn't feel it on your body long after he'd left, was it really worth laying for him? I wanted to feel that.

It was the best night ever. And they hadn't talked about any of it since.

I picture him always like he's looking at us through glass—windshields, sliding patio doors.

The memories come in pieces. Little bits of grit too small to pick up even with a wetted finer, too small even to hold in my gaze.