Lokesh Tuli > Quotes

“Humans and their obsession with chasing what's not meant for them... it’s the classic tragedy isn't it?

We think you know something God doesn't.

We think if we suffer enough, the universe will finally owe us a prize. We’re just romantics in a world that prefers accountants.

We like to wake up and say, 'I almost had it.' No, you didn't. You were never even close.

So cheers to the god damn fools who dream.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You treat happiness like it’s a destination.

Like if you just get the right job, the right partner, the right seasoning, you’ll arrive. You won’t.

Happiness is not a state of being. It’s a moment. It’s a cold beer on a hot day. That’s it.

The rest of existence? It’s work. It’s pain. It’s uncertainty.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to read every goddamn book ever written.

I want to watch every movie, travel to every forgotten corner of the map,

I want to love every beautiful, complicated woman on this earth.

But you can’t. Because one life is just unfairly, criminally small.

So what do you do?

You just try to drink the ocean through a straw,
and hope you don't drown.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Never let your hands go bare. Empty hands start to shake; they reach for things that aren't there. Get a drink. Gin is good, but whiskey is a better friend. Hold the glass. It’s a prop until the bitter end.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There's death and then there is first morning after letting someone go…
That split second where you reach across the sheets and your hand finds nothing but cold cotton.

That’s the shittiest feeling in the world.

The sun comes up like a police spotlight, demanding answers you don’t have.The coffee tastes like ash. The birds singing outside sound like they’re mocking you.
You realize you have to relearn how to be a singular noun, and frankly, I’m not sure how to do that just yet”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Here’s a spoiler alert: The 65-year-old version of you? Not that much fun.”

You are saving your joy for 65? Work now, live later. Bullsh*t.That’s a bad bet.You’re banking on a body that might not work and a world that might not exist.

You’re pushing all your chips to the end of the table, saving the best wine for a party nobody’s gonna show up to.

The world might blow up tomorrow So Eat that fruit, drink that rum, and kiss that girl tonight?

Coz Tonight you still look good.

LIVE, DAMN YOU!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You were the last person to see me before I put on the mask.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I don’t care if they have a badge, a billion dollars, or a mandate from the Queen herself. Power attracts the worst kind of psychopaths. If someone tells you they have power over you 'for your own good,' you tell them to fuck off, and you watch your back.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Everybody thinks they're gonna get a polite, formally drafted two-week notice before the lights go out. It’s a tragic, hilarious joke. The Grim Reaper doesn't care about your schedule.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Being in your 30's feels like standing in the middle of 100 open doors

And every single door is a completely different life. A different woman, a different mistake,

It looks like freedom, but it’s actually a goddamn hostage situation.

I’m just standing there in the center, paralyzed,

Because I know the second I step through one of them,

I have to listen to the other ninety-nine slam shut forever. So I better stay in the fucking hallway.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You only get so many meals. You only get so many sunsets. You only get so many chances to look someone in the eye and say, 'I am entirely, desperately here with you, and I give a profound, earth-shattering shit about this.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“If you’re too sad, you can’t work. If you’re too happy, you realize you don’t need the work.

So they keep you right there in the middle. ‘Okay.’

It’s a trap. A golden cage where nothing hurts, but nothing bleeds either.

The world wants you numb because numb people buy toaster ovens.

Screw ‘okay.’ Go get your heart broken. Go get into a fistfight. Feel something, you, numb bastard.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“When did the passionate pursuit of... well, anything... become something to be mocked?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The shrinks will tell you obsessions are curable.

You dry out, you get clean, you take up meditation, and you learn to sit quietly in a room.

But let’s be honest. People built like us don't get ‘cured.'

You drop one obsession and you violently latch onto the next!

From politics to whiskey to the absolute, terrifying pursuit of the Truth!

You swing from madness to madness, because the alternative is a slow, agonizing death by boredom!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“To be safe... it is a kind of death. You wish to be protected from the sting of the world?

You want the world to be a soft, pink nursery! It is a delusion of the highest order!

The heart must break to open.

You must face the horror!

You must stare into the abyss until it blinks!

Do not hide in the bunker! Charge into the f*cking fire!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“While the girl to my right places one final bet. She's praying I carry the cash for the room, As we hide from the dawn and the impending gloom.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I don't know how to want something without turning it into a violence against myself.

I don’t know how to like things. I only know how to obsess until I ruin them or ruin me.

I see something beautiful—a woman, a dream, a moment of silence—and I don't just reach for it. I set myself on fire to see if the light will attract it.

I turn every ambition into an ulcer and every love affair into a car crash, just because I don't believe I’m allowed to have the thing unless I destroy myself to get it.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I dont trust anyone who claims they don’t talk to themselves.....

I immediately assume you’re either lying or a f*cking serial killer.

What do you mean your brain is just... quiet?

You mean to tell me you don’t pace in your room dead in the night rehearsing what you shoulda said in an argument three days ago?

I mean, I’ve won a hundred fights in my mind just walking down to the general store for a pack of gum.

If you aren't rehearsing your legal defense in the shower, you are entirely unprepared for the savage realities of this world man!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I’ve become an expert at goodbyes.

I’m just making sure I’m gone before the hurt arrives.

I break my own heart on my own terms... just so you never get the chance to do it for me.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The duality of never wanting to see them again and still yearning for just one sight... that is the great cosmic joke, isn't it?

The heart is a stubborn traitor

You know that woman is a bad news.

You know she’s the poison, the beautiful disaster that burns the house down. But God, you miss the fire.

So you sit there in the dark, drinking whiskey, waiting for the phone to ring hoping for the torture to start all over again.

Because the torture is better than the nothingness. And we are all terrified of the nothingness.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“First, the curiosity rots. Then the dick stops working. Then the kindness. You turn into a gray thing. A thing that drives on the freeway and curses at strangers. A thing that drinks light beer in front of the television, waiting for the void.”
― lokesh tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I fucking romanticize the idea of disappearing forever.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You think intimacy is all bloody roses and holding hands in the park, do ya?

Bollocks!

You let a complicated, maddening woman into your life, and the next thing you know, your entire vocabulary is compromised.

Her cadence becomes your cadence.

It's the ultimate infiltration. Long after the meal is over, long after she is gone, you realize she has permanently altered change the way you speak. She's hijacked your syntax

But... you realize it's the only piece of 'her you've got left. And you wouldn't trade it for the world, would ya?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“My love language is a a barrage of highly inappropriate dangerous questions.

I don't want the polite fiction of your day.

Because I am absolutely fascinated by the beautiful, tangled, chaotic mess inside your head.

I want to know what you think about at 3 AM when the world goes quiet and the anxiety creeps in.

So, Tell me about all the terrible, wonderful things you feel and never say out loud.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You either open your mouth and spill the god damn truth and watch it hurt the people you love or you swallow it down and take the heavy, unspoken thing home in your gut and let it eat you alive from the inside out.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“To be born is to be wounded.”

The smart ones know it. The poets know it.

"You spend your whole life trying to heal the cut. trying to find the happiness that was promised. But the cut is the point.

We are not here to be happy.

We are here to be broken, and to be mended, and to be broken again. The light does not come from the smile.

The light comes through the cracks.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Some kids never get to be children at all

They’re born into a warzone of someone else's making. They raise themselves.

They wipe their own tears and fight off the wolves themselves. Soothe their own nightmares.

And then, years later, When the dust settles,
And the world asks them what they want…

They just freeze.

Because desire... desire is a delicate flower. And nothing grows in the soil where only survival was planted.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There is a invisible timeline that everybody seems to follow for some f*cking reason

Graduate at this age, get a job at this, earn this much, marry here, have kids there, buy a house at 30,
retire at 60!

Who the f*ck said life has to be this way?

Listen to me:

Make mistakes. Break hearts. Write the novel. Crash the damn car just do whatever you have do but just dont die before you are officially dead!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Give them the 'Half-Smile' routine. It doesn't reach the eyes; nobody looks at the eyes on this scene. It just says you're detached. Amused. Cooler than the room. A ghost playing dress-up inside of a tomb.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Once you’ve stood on a street corner where you don't speak the language, and the world is screaming at you in colors you’ve never seen... you fucking change.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”