John Sterling Quotes

You're heading for a breakdown. Why don't you pull yourself to pieces?

A bad feeling is a commotion of the mind repugnant to reason, and against nature.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.

I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh. I savor the scowl on her face, the hate in her eyes. She was like a machine; she was cold and emotionless, bound by logic alone. And I broke her.

The confusing lesson whipped Frankie's anger into something she had never felt before. It was like an emotional meringue - the airy feeling of loneliness topped with the hard crisp of injustice. Yet its taste was far from sweet.

Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.

She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.

Why must I feel like that? Why must I chase the cat?

I'm more interested in the psychic intricacies that they build up and try to run away from, and how they self-construct. A lot of my work is about self-construction. Here, it's those folks who are deeply wounded and bewildered. They're not just victims of trauma; they've been shaken so forcefully that they don't quite know how or where to stand.

I can't sleep with you tonight, baby, my head's all messed up, you've no idea. It's somewhere else and it's full of voices and songs and bad things.

Only self-hatred could lead him to ruin himself because his heart was "broken.

I can hear my brother's voice in my head. Your problem is that you're too emotional. But how can I not be emotional, Rowan? How can I not care?

"It almost always happens that people enjoy a few moments and then afterwards feel very guilty. The guilt arises because of the ego. The ego starts torturing them, "What are you doing? Have you decided to kill me? And I am your only treasure. Killing me? You will be destroyed. Killing me is destroying yourself."

Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?

In his deepest heart there surge tremendous shame and madness mixed with sorrow and love whipped on by frenzy and a courage aware of its own worth.

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.

I suffer from a spiritual malaise which manifests itself in outbursts of vicious rage.

Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.

Only love can save me and love has destroyed me.

Lovers are commonly industrious to make themselves uneasy.

I was wild and tame and pulled into shreds and crushed into being all at once.