Özlem Köse > Özlem's Quotes

“A healthy relationship is when two individuated adults decide to have a relationship and that becomes a third entity. They nurture the relationship and the relationship nurtures them. But they’re not overly dependent or independent: They are interdependent, which means that they take care of the majority of their needs and wants on their own, but when they can’t, they’re not afraid to ask their partner for help.” She pauses to let it all sink in, then concludes, “Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

“Guilt is about what you do with your dick. Shame is about being a dick.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships

“Loneliness is holding in a joke because you have no one to share it with.”
― Neil Strauss, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book about Relationships

“Once upon a time there was a child who had a golden brain. His parents only discovered this by chance when he injured his head and gold instead of blood flowed out. They then began to look after him carefully and would not let him play with other children for fear of being robbed. When the boy was grown up and wanted to go out into the world, his mother said: “We have done so much for you,we ought to be able to share your wealth.” Then her son took a large piece of gold out of his brain and gave it to his mother. He lived in great style with a friend who, however, robbed him one night and ran away. After that the man resolved to guard his secret and to go out to work, because his reserves were visibly dwindling. One day he fell in love with a beautiful girl who loved him too, but no more than the beautiful clothes he gave her so lavishly. He married her and was very happy, but after two years she died and he spent the rest of his wealth on her funeral, which had to be splendid. Once, as he was creeping through the streets,weak,poor, and unhappy, he saw a beautiful little pair of boots that would have been perfect for his wife. He forgot that she was dead- perhaps because his emptied brain no longer worked- and entered the shop to buy the boots. But in that very moment he fell, and the shopkeeper saw a dead man lying on the ground.

This story sounds as though it were invented, but it is true from beginning to end. There are people who have to pay for the smallest things in life with their very substance and their spinal cord. That is a constantly recurring pain, and then when they are tired of suffering…



Does not mother love belong to the ‘smallest’, but also indispensable, things in life, for which many people paradoxically have to pay by giving up their living selves?”
― Alice MIller, The Drama of the gifted child

“Thinking yourself uniquely terrible is its own form of narcissism.”
― Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure

“We increase our suffering through our attempts to avoid it”
― Miriam Greenspan

“it’s easy to love
the nice things about ourselves
but true self-love is
embracing the difficult parts
that live in all of us
- acceptance”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“you are a soul. a world. a portal. a spirit. you are never alone. you are organs and blood and flesh and muscle. a colony of miracles weaving into each other.”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“on days i could not move it was women who came to water my feet until i was strong enough to stand it was women who nourished me back to life”
― Rupi Kaur, Home Body

“When we’ve been victimized, there’s a part of our psyche that identifies with the victimizer, and sometimes we adopt that punitive, victimizer stance toward ourselves, denying ourselves the permission to feel good, depriving ourselves of our birthright: joy.”
― Edith Eger, The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life

“The life of a healthy individual is characterized by fears, conflicting feelings, doubts, frustrations, as much as by the positive features. The main thing is that the man or woman feels he or she is living his or her own life, taking responsibility for action or inaction, and able to take credit for success and blame for failure. In one language it can be said that the individual has emerged from dependence to independence, or to autonomy.”
― D.W. Winnicott, Home Is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst

“It happens when we expect the person we are loving to do their part and love us the same, yet they don’t. When it happens, it hurts. No one goes through this life without meeting some type of hurt or pain. Do not let that disappointment lead to a disappointed life. Do not let it harden you heart, do not let this failed attempt at love, despite what number of try it is, make you give up.”
― Pierre Alex Jeanty, Apologies That Never Came

“The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“This is me knowing that I have to let you go. That no matter how much I love you or how hard we work at this or how badly we both want each other to be happy, we are never going to be the right partners for each other. This is my acceptance that the best things are never straightforward and that I want you to take whatever crooked, twisted path you need to take if it will lead you towards your dreams. This is me knowing that I have to do what’s right. That sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go – to do more, feel more, be more than the person they ever could ever have become by your side.”
― Heidi Priebe, This Is Me Letting You Go

“Authentic joy is not a euphoric state or a feeling of being high. Rather, it is a state of appreciation that allows us to participate fully in our lives. We train in rejoicing in the good fortune of self and others.”
― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am ”
― Cooley, Inscriptions

“A healthy ego is skilled in imagination, feeling, intuition, and sensing, in addition to thinking.”
― Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

“Be critical. Women have the right to say: This is surface, this falsifies reality, this degrades.”
― Tillie Olsen

“What do you think is the biggest waste of time?"
"Comparing yourself to others," said the mole.”
― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

“Doing nothing with friends is never doing nothing, is it?' asked the boy.

'No,' said the mole.”
― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

“Rest—the state of the feminine creative—is devalued as all things that have to do with feminine power.”
― Valerie Rein, Patriarchy Stress Disorder: The Invisible Inner Barrier to Women's Happiness and Fulfillment

“Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance -- letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens. Ultimately even the observer you are not. You are the ultimate potentiality of which the all-embracing consciousness is the manifestation and expression.”
― Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I am that

“Each pleasure is wrapped in pain. You soon discover that you cannot have one without the other … Real happiness is not vulnerable, because it does not depend on circumstances … Real happiness flows from within.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“Sabah gözlerimi sana açarım.Akşam, uykularımı senden alırım.Nereye, ne yana dönsem karşımda mutluluğun o harikulade baş dönmesini bulurum. Böyleyken gene de şükretmem halime, hergelelik, açgözlülük eder, seni üzerim. Aklıma gelmez ki seni usandırır, sana gına getiririm. Sana dert, sana ağırlık, sana sıkıntı olurum. Nemsin be? Sevgili, dost, yar, arkadaş...Hepsi. En çok da en ilk de Leyla-sın bana. Bir umudum, dünya gözüm, dikili ağacımsın. Uçan kuşum, akan suyumsun. Seni anlatabilmek seni. Ben cehennem çarklarından kurtuldum, üşüyorum kapama gözlerini.”
― Ahmed Arif, Leylim Leylim - Ahmed Arif'ten Leylâ Erbil'e Mektuplar 1954-1957 -ve 1977'de son bir mektup-

“Bu bok soyu alışkanlıklar, töreler, günah sevap ve ayıplar köleliği olmasa... Bütün tedirginliğimiz bundan. Bundan, yüzünü hayalledikçe ağzımın acılaşması.”
― Ahmed Arif, Leylim Leylim - Ahmed Arif'ten Leylâ Erbil'e Mektuplar 1954-1957 -ve 1977'de son bir mektup-

“Being our own safe haven and secure base requires that we first have the capacity to be with our self. To sit, to listen, to be available to whatever arises within us.”
― Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

“Safety IS the treatment. -- Stephen W Porges, 2016”
― Bonnie Badenoch

“Loneliness isn’t the physical absence of other people, he said—it’s the sense that you’re not sharing anything that matters with anyone else. If you have lots of people around you—perhaps even a husband or wife, or a family, or a busy workplace—but you don’t share anything that matters with them, then you’ll still be lonely.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions

“You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions

“You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met. You need to have a community. You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects. You need to have meaningful work. You need the natural world. You need to feel you are respected. You need a secure future. You need connections to all these things. You need to release any shame you might feel for having been mistreated.”
― Johann Hari, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions