The New Sincerity Quotes

“Honestly? I actually prefer to be a little intellectually intimidated by the women I love.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want her sharp. I want her cunning. I want to look at her across a room full of plastic smiles and hollow conversations and think: She is out of my league in ways I don't even understand yet.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to engage in a conversation that feels like a knife fight in a phone booth, and if she can’t mentally back me into a corner and hold a blade to my throat, what are we even doing?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to look into her eyes and feel utterly, comprehensively outmatched.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I have engineered my entire existence around the belief that if I didn't bleed for it, it ain’t fucking mine.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“What do you mean we never dated, and yet I am still not over you?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Being attached to someone you never actually had is a special kind of purgatory. It’s a waiting room in hell where the numbers are never called. You are a victim of a disaster that is entirely undocumented. You can't even claim the wreckage to the rest of the world, because technically, officially, the ship never sailed.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“It is the most wicked torture of the modern age—to be completely, violently shattered by someone who technically owes you absolutely nothing!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There is the kind of death that puts you in the ground, and then there is the morning after you let someone you love go.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I don’t remember your middle name, but I remember the way the light hit your hair and how the world paused when you smiled.”
― 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 used you to keep the loneliness away on Tuesdays. I watched the light go out in your eyes, and I didn't stop because I was too busy falling in love with my own sadness.”
― 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”

“Your death ain't gonna be some grand, dramatic exit. It will come on an ordinary, aggressively mundane day, right in the dead middle of your meticulously unfinished plans. You’re gonna drop dead on a random, unremarkable Tuesday afternoon. You’ll be in the middle of complaining about the traffic, or worrying about your 401k, or drafting an email to someone you don't even like. You're gonna leave behind a half-finished to-do list pinned to the fridge with a cheap magnet. There will be wet laundry sitting in the dryer. You will die with a whole lot of 'somedays' still tucked uselessly in your pocket.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Live a little, before you’re gone, because the clock is ticking, and the reaper always, always wins.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I am terrified that I am going to raise glass children in a world of hammers. I see the way kids are raised today. Insulated from failure. Protected from pain. Given trophies just for breathing. It is the most dangerous thing you can do to a human being.”
― 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”

“Do not be a soft, helpless victim in this world. Be sharp. Be dangerous. Do not become a slick, polished version of a human being. Keep your rough edges. Read real books. Books that hurt to read. Listen to music that makes you want to tear your chest open and show the world your beating heart.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“And when you find the person you want to build a life with, do not look for fireworks. Look for a foxhole buddy. Look for someone who doesn’t flinch when the artillery starts falling. Look for someone who will stand back-to-back with you in the dark and hold the line. And when you commit to them, you commit in blood. You do not walk away when it gets boring. You do not walk away when it gets hard. You keep the wolves away.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You are eating the leftovers of your own life.”

"Nostalgia isn't a warm feeling; it’s a parasite.

It convinces you that the meal you had ten years ago was better than the one in front of you right now. It wasn't.
Your brain edits out the bad parts, the boredom, the awkward silence, and the pain, and leaves you with a 'highlight reel' that never existed.
You are starving yourself in the present to feast on a memory. And let me tell you, that memory has gone bad. Stop reheating the past.
It tastes like ash. Cook something new, or get the fuck out of the kitchen.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Why do I film this?

I film the sunset, the coffee, the street…

Why can’t I just look at the view and let it be enough?
Because I think we as humans are terrified of experiencing beauty alone.
If I stand here and feel this joy, but nobody sees it... did it really happen?
We are constantly building an alibi to prove we actually lived.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You know whats the worst thing in the damn world?

It’s the alarm clock on a Monday morning.

You go out and see the world, and you feel blood pumping in your veins. You feel like a human being.

Then you come back. To the traffic. To the boss who hates his wife. To the rent.
You trade the sunsets for a paycheck. You trade your life for a little bit of comfort.
It’s not a life. It’s a waiting room for death. And the worst part is, now that you’ve seen the exit... staying feels like suicide.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Every time you say 'yes' when you mean 'no,' you put a bullet in the head of the real you.

You’re stacking bodies in the basement,

The dreamer, the rebel, the romantic... you took them out back and shot them like Old Yeller because they were too loud for the dinner party.

Now you’re civilized. You’re polite. And you’re the only one left alive in a house full of ghosts.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There is something freeing about being a little difficult to define.

When people ask you the inevitable, boring question—'So, what do you do?’

and you don't have a neat sentence ready,

You are no longer a noun; you are a verb.

You are moving, eating, grieving, seeing.

You’re too F*CKING loud, too F*CKING broken.

You are a collection of scars and stories that don't fit on a business card.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“How paradoxical of her to understand and misunderstand me at the same time. It drives me mad.

I am inside her head, but I am utterly incapable of being in her life.

We are best friends in the gutter and total strangers in the light.

It’s the closest I’ve ever been to anyone, honestly
I feel like I’m yelling at her from the moon.

Nobody has ever felt so close yet distant.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The strangest, most heartbreaking part about nostalgia is that the moments that actually haunt you felt completely ordinary when you were living them.

It’s just driving to the grocery store with the windows down.

It’s her burning the toast on a Tuesday morning and laughing about it.

While you were living it, it was just another boring Tuesday. You had no idea that you were standing right in the middle of a masterpiece.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“How did you get into poetry?

Look, I’d love to give you some romantic, tortured-artist bullshit about the hot muse visiting me in the dead of night, or a profound calling from the literary gods.

But I’m not gonna lie to you.

I just woke up one day, realized I possessed a crippling inability to hold down a respectable job, and figured... and I figured I had a hell of a lot to whine about.

So Writing was just a cheaper alternative to therapy, and it gave me an excuse to piss on the absurd, beautiful tragedy of the human condition …”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.’

What a Fucking lie!

A desperate lie to keep the masses from weeping in the streets....

When the world takes a swing at you and misses the kill shot, you do not return as a titan. You return as a ghost.

What doesn't kill you shatters the illusion. It strips the flesh from the bone. It leaves you broken.

And if you don't find a way to let that poison out, it’ll rot you from the inside.

So you write. You become the shaman of your own sorrow.”
― 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”

“So, somebody asked me the other day what’s my type is, right?

I actually prefer to be a little intellectually intimidated by the woman I love….

I want her sharp. I want her cunning. I want to look at her across the room and think, she is out of my league in ways I don't even understand yet.

I want to look into her eyes and feel utterly outmatched.

The kind of intellect that strips you bare, leaves you bleeding in the poetry of your own fucking ignorance.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”