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It’s a dangerous thing to like the way you look through someone else’s eyes. It makes you want to tailor yourself to better fit the image of you they’ve conjured up.

It’s unhealthy that we move past conflicts by pretending nothing happened, no need for apology. It will only breed resentment. A lifetime of resolving nothing and silently swallowing it down. And eventually just silence.

one of the great things that comes with age is the realization that most people’s attitudes aren’t about you.

That’s the worst thing about men—their ability to ruin the things you love by tainting them with bad memories.

Boys aren’t as stupid as we like to think they are, (…) They’re only stupid when you don’t want them to be. When it would work in your favor for them to be stupid, they’re always way too damn smart.

Perhaps that is what it is like being with other people. Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.

I realised that the search for the Knowledge has encouraged us to think of the House as if it were a sort of riddle to be unravelled, a text to be interpreted, and that if ever we discover the Knowledge, then it will be as if the Value has been wrested from the House and all that remains will be mere scenery.

I felt a surge of anger and for a moment I thought I would not tell him what I knew. But then I thought that it was unkind to punish him for something he cannot help. It is not his fault that he does not see things the way I do.

Writing inculcates habits of precision and carefulness.

A great many things look different from a distance. Truth is like ugliness: you need to be close to see it.

The physician spoke with confidence. He was a man, after all. He had no reason to think he would not be believed.

“Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make love known?”
William Shakespeare · Macbeth

I don’t think there’s a right way to feel. (…) And you can’t control it, anyway. Feelings are like weather. They just happen, and then they pass.

There’s steadiness and dependability, and those are great. But settling? Just deciding you already know everything you like and dislike on the entire planet, everything you’re good at, every friend you’re going to make, and every food you’re ever going to eat?

Things go smoother if you don’t let people get a rise out of you,” he says. “If you give them control over how you feel, they’ll always use it. (…) If you don’t give other people responsibility for your feelings, you can have a decent relationship with most of them.

every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back.
You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

To ignore it is to drain it of its power.

A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.

I do love you, babe, cumbersome as it is for me to feel, and to confess.

the two things that bring perspective and revelation to a character: time and distance.

After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.

Always look where the action isn’t, because that’s where the action is.

Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer.

Now he had answers, but they weren’t doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren’t making things simpler or easier. They weren’t helping.

“You can’t just decide to be happy.”
“No, you can’t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?”

He’d started that little speech speaking normally and he ended it shouting. In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

(...)
He wasn’t even ashamed. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn’t matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad.

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaging in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold and immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence.
(...)

You'll know what to say when the time comes. That's the art, eh? What to say, and when to say it. And the rest is silence.

You have this purity thing, but seriously, no one will care. There is no purity in art. The process of how you arrive at something doesn’t matter at all. The game is going to be completely original because we made it. If you have access to a tool that will help, there is no reason not to use that tool.