Dathan Auerbach > Quotes

“We want so badly to be happy – to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we’d live – that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Truth to tell, at any point in our lives we’ve forgotten more than we know about our own history. The world moves on, and so do we, and what was once important fades away.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“It’s a bit poetic that it is so easy to take advantage of those who have no advantages to begin with.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“How far can you go into the woods?”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time.
So we keep them in our memories.
And when we regret that we don’t have more memories of them, maybe our minds give us more gifts; gradually we find ourselves remembering them being with us in times and places that they couldn’t have been, and gradually we stop correcting ourselves because, well, we want them to have been there.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“We were explorers. We were adventurers. We were friends.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself. – Harlan Ellison”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“a can-opener with no tuna made no sense to Boxes.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“He didn't mind, though. He hardly noticed at all. Because that's the thing about hope--when it seems that there's no point in moving, it pushes us so forcefully that we come to feel like we /need/ it to keep going...

And that's what hope really is, after all. An anesthetic. Something that takes the sharp edges of reality out of focus just enough that we can keep looking at it, keep moving forward with steps that are guided by the assurance that every inch of ground can't possibly be covered in broken glass. And then when it /is/--- when your feet are left as coiled ribbons of wet skin-- you forget what guided you there in the first place.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Bad Man

“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves, and when we do, it’s back to the void, and it’s time for more guesses toward a better life.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Our minds work hard to avoid dissonance – if we hold a belief strongly enough, our minds will forcefully reject conflicting evidence so that we can maintain the integrity of our understanding of the world.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Right as my eyes were about to move onto the next photo in the sequence, they froze and focused on something that vexed me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single, repeating thought. Why am I in this picture?”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Our lives are so short that it seems a crime to squander any of it by forgetting. Memories extend our lives backward through time, making them feel longer. And that’s what we want. So we try to remember. But sometimes, when we do, we wish that we could just forget again.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“When you try to reconstruct the series, you find that it isn’t complete, but maybe this never really bothers you, because you can’t miss what you don’t remember.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“We were explorers.

We were adventurers.

We were friends.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“The events of our lives unfold linearly, but in the mental reel of these past experiences, most of the frames that haven’t been completely stolen by time are left distorted and blurred by it. When you try to reconstruct the series, you find that it isn’t complete, but maybe this never really bothers you, because you can’t miss what you don’t remember.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Sitting in my car that night, I saw it all clearly for the first time. As an adult, I could see the connections that were lost on a child who tends to see the world in snapshots rather than as a sequence. The picture was complete, but I wished I had never seen it at all.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“I wasn’t scared of the dark, I was scared of what could be hiding in it.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“Where did you come from?” Ben muttered to the toy, like it might answer. Stampie just smiled. And just like Ben’s first night, it felt almost as if the store were smiling back.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Bad Man

“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time. So we keep them in our memories.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“far can you go into the woods?”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“it's a bit poetic that it is so easy to take advantage of those who have no advantages to begin with”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“The world moves on, and so do we, and what was once important fades away.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“...as hope comforts us, it becomes easier and easier to forget that it too was in the jar that Pandora carried. It's the one horror of the world that wasn't loosed when she opened the lid.

It's the one horror that lives in us.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Bad Man

“Come the middle of October, the air was beginning to cool, but like every year, it was happening slowly. It was hard to even feel yet. But the woods could tell. The orange-and-red requiem for the hotter months played vibrantly on the leaves of the oak trees that peppered the side of the road, a beautiful and warm foreground for the choir of deep green pines beyond.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Bad Man

“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time. So we keep them in our memories. And when we regret that we don’t have more memories of them, maybe our minds give us more gifts; gradually we find ourselves remembering them being with us in times and places that they couldn’t have been, and gradually we stop correcting ourselves because, well, we want them to have been there.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal

“The concept of the Balloon Project was fairly straightforward. Each student would release a balloon with a note attached, and then would wait for a response from whoever happened to find the balloon.”
― Dathan Auerbach, Penpal