I felt despair. The word "despair" is overused and banalized now, but it's a serious word, and I'm using it seriously. It's close to what people call dread or angst, but it's not these things, quite. It's more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable sadness of knowing I'm small and weak and selfish and going, without doubt, to die. It ( Read more... )

I'm good, and that's coming from someone who hates me more than anyone else could.

When I was young I read a lot of books, observed people around me, and came to the conclusion that most people’s lives are completely boring. So I made a rule for myself - find out what most people are doing, and do something else.

When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgment but failures of feeling.

Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in ( Read more... )

When people say they do not care what others think of them, for the most part they deceive themselves. Generally they mean only that they will do as they choose, in the confidence that no one will know their vagaries; and at the utmost only that they are willing to act contrary to the opinion of the majority because they are supported by the ( Read more... )

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.

"Hrmm," the boy murmured, turning the instrument over (albeit with some difficulty) in his lap, examining it carefully. He didn't quite hear his father, who was twittering on and on about how he got it for cheap in a little shop, and it was called a guitar, and how he just knew the boy would like it. Then a call came in on the monitor, so the ( Read more... )