Natali Broeks > Natali's Quotes

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“They see life as a gift and are acutely aware that one day it will end, that our driving force is to survive, and the only certainty is that we won’t.”
― Tony Santorella, Bored Gay Werewolf

“To be noticed is to be loved.”
― Ali Smith, There But For The

“Do you believe in God?

I do, please stop, there's so much blood”
― Andrew Joseph White, Hell Followed With Us

“All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Being beautiful, was that for men?'
'Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“When something terrible happens—or at least, when you learn about it—it feels like it should affect the entire world. It feels like something should change. But it doesn’t.”
― Andrew Joseph White, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

“Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?”
― Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience--that of half the global population, after all--is seen as, well, niche.”
― Caroline Criado-Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

“Why do you lie so much? And about the weirdest little things?", my mother always asked me. "I don’t know", I always said. But I did know. It was very simple. Because it was a better story.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God

“It makes it very hard to work out where you belong when you are brilliant at things that others find hard, but useless at things that others find easy.”
― Sarah Hendrickx, Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“And don’t ever, EVER compare yourself to a neurotypical (NT) girl or woman. They are a different species and you’ll only feel inadequate and bad about yourself. Find your tribe – online, in groups at comic conventions. Find people who are delighted that you are you. And you should be delighted that you are you too because when you’re 70, you’ll still be skateboarding, you’ll look amazing (from all those years of not ruining your skin with make-up) and you’ll realise that all those things you worried about don’t matter at all.”
― Sarah Hendrickx, Women and Girls with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Understanding Life Experiences from Early Childhood to Old Age

“And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child's whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tenderness, of fondness, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent's reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“I am very interested and fascinated how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“But I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I guess I was crying because we had nowhere else to go, no choice but to go on living in this world. Crying because we had no other world to choose, and crying at everything before us, everything around us.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Samantha Heather Mackey thinks she understands everything, but she fails to understand the depths of the human heart. She fails to understand the depths of our heart. Our heart our heart our heart! We’ve read Jane Eyre too, you cunt, and we’ve read The Waves, and when we read it, you know, we wept for minutes.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“At first, suicide was just a word, a vague idea separate from reality. It pointed at a way that other people chose to die, people I didn't even know. But once the word became my own, it took on the strangest shape. I could feel it growing deep inside of me. Suicide wasn't something that happened to strangers. I could make it happen, if I wanted to.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Heaven

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Writing off the thing you love like it's just a hobby? Sounds like something only grown-ups would do, don't you think?”
― Tsubasa Yamaguchi, ブルーピリオド 1 [Blue Period 1]

“As long as you are following God’s will, friend Kline. But even God sometimes becomes impatient. You know the story of Jonah, friend Kline? How many whales do you suppose God will deign send to swallow you? When does God run out of whales?”
― Brian Evenson, Last Days

“When God gives you more than you can tolerate, you turn to instinct. And instinct is a force beyond anyone’s control.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona

“Once you experience a terrible trauma and understand the world from an extreme perspective, it is difficult to overcome this perspective. Because your very survival depends on it.”
― Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny