Status Updates From Vandaag was ik mezelf lieve...

But I realized that this craving for solitude was better suited to later life, and that it had affected me too young, too early.

Every day brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world’s sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for being alone, unkempt, untended—later, this disappeared and then showed up again in my mother.

The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse, she said.

I’ve always had just enough sense to spare others, but never enough to save myself from misfortune.

How often have I had to lie or keep my mouth shut to protect the people I love most—at the very times I could stand them least—to keep them from plunging headlong into some disaster. Whenever I wanted my hatred to last forever, a feeling of disgust would soften it up. With a hint of love on the one hand, and a heap of self-reproach on the other, I was already surrendering to the next hatred.

Senselessness was easier for me to handle than aimlessness.