ApraReads > ApraReads's Quotes

“I didn't kill Gabriel. Gabriel killed me. All I did was pull the trigger.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Sometimes it’s hard to grasp why it is that the answers to the present lie in the past. A simple analogy might be helpful: a leading psychiatrist in the field of sexual abuse once told me she had, in thirty years of extensive work with paedophiles, never met one who hadn’t himself been abused as a child. This doesn’t mean that all abused children go on to become abusers; but it is impossible for someone who was not abused to become an abuser. No one is born evil. As Winnicott put it: ‘A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.’ As babies, we are innocent sponges, blank slates – with only the most basic needs present: to eat, shit, love and be loved. But something goes wrong, depending on the circumstances into which we are born, and the house in which we grow up. A tormented, abused child can never take revenge in reality, as she is powerless and defenceless, but she can – and must – harbour vengeful fantasies in her imagination. Rage, like fear, is reactive in nature.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“That was the horror of it. We all secretly hope that tragedy will only ever happen to other people... sooner or later, it happens to you.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens

“You can’t love someone if you’re afraid of them,”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens

“Just because the stars fell doesn't mean they weren't worth wishing on.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“No, not depressed. They ruined that word for me. I think the worst feeling in the world is telling someone you’re in pain and hearing them say there’s no wound.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Because you don't lose someone once. You lose them hearing a song that reminds you
of their smile. Passing an old landmark. Laughing at a joke they would've laughed at. You lose them infinitely.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Time will cease, disease will fester, and death will die.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“People have this delusion of inherent purpose as if fate is written in stone when really the pen has always been in our hands”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“We spent our whole lives together pretending, but if you pretend for too long, reality reminds you one way or another that it doesn't like being insulted”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“You know you never wanted us to be happy, Sam. Happiness is a brittle,
fleeting thing.
You wanted us to feel loved, and we did”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Sometimes hope just isn't enough.
It isn't meant to save people.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Time, Disease, and Death are the greatest thieves in the world.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Because if we chose to only love what we didn't lose, then we would never love at all.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“The dead do not haunt, no matter how much you beg them to.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“She gives people life only to deny it for herself.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Bouquets lay next to unread cards wishing recovery in messy cursive. I haven't always understood irony but I like this particular piece. For someone you wish to live, give them something that is dying.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Time is kind with grief. It takes it from you, piece by piece, till the sorrow is a song you remember the beat of but no longer hear.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“In one way or another, all first loves are lost.”
― Lancali ., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Paper is my heart. Pens are my veins. They return words I stole, blood to paint a scene.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love with Hope

“Because you don't lose someone once...You lose them infinitely.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love With Hope

“We spent our whole lives together pretending, but if you pretend for too long, reality reminds you one way or another that it doesn’t like being insulted.”
― Lancali., I Fell in Love with Hope

“My stars are falling.

And I can’t save them.”
― Lancali., I Fell in Love With Hope

“Death is not a being. It is a state of being. We humanize it, demonize it, give it a soul because it is easier to condemn something with a face. Disease is in the same boat, only it's a lot easier to convict it. Disease has reason. Virus, bacteria, defected cells. Those already have a face.
Time doesn't need a face at all. Time steals openly. Such carelessness on its part is enough to be found guilty.
Guilty of what, though? Time, Disease, and Death don't hate us. The world and its many shadows are not capable of hate. They simply don't care about us.
They don't need us. They never made, and as such, never broke any promises.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love With Hope

“Disease is greedy. It takes pieces of you until you no longer recognize yourself, and Neo, C, and Sony don’t recognize themselves outside of this place anymore.”
― Lancali

“Because you don’t lose someone once. You lose them hearing a song that reminds you of their smile. Passing an old landmark. Laughing at a joke they would’ve liked. You lose them infinitely.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love with Hope

“The day I met him, even buried, is a memory laced with the joy of its happening and the pain of its passing. Because even if I told you I have forgotten, you can't trust me. You don't ever forget the first time you fell.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love With Hope

“before the love of my life decided he didn’t want to live anymore,
he told me the stars belonged to us.
We spent every night together, our
bodies softly intertwined on harsh roof tiles, memorizing the patterns in the sky. So even as he withered, as his body became less body and more corpse,
I believed our stars would give him faith. I believed they would keep him
alive so long as he could look up and see they hadn’t fallen.”
― Lancali., I Fell in Love With Hope

“The love of my life wants to die.

That’s a tragic thing to say out loud. No. Maybe not tragic. Maybe just
unfair.”
― Lancali., I Fell in Love With Hope

“The thing about hope is that it is a fearful reaction. We are hopeful because we are afraid. Because we think on some level we are owed. But this story was never about the hope that arises in catastrophic moments. That hope is passive, not a being, but a state of being.”
― Lancali, I Fell in Love With Hope