If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.
You're back where you swore yourself you wouldn't beThe familiar shackles you can't tell from your own skinYour head's under water when you learned to swimOn a road to hell, congratulations, you're free...
We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.
I love death because life hates me.
He ran as fast as he could, but the memories were fast too. He stumbled upon them and fell to the ground. The memories got up and stared into his eyes menacingly, they laughed harder and kept their foot on his neck. He choked and fought to breathe. He tried and failed to scream. They choked him hard until he suffered and died miserably inside.
The difference between a conventional counsellor and an empowerment counsellor is that a conventional therapist will allow you to dwell in your pit of misery for months, years and possibly even decades; whereas an empowerment counsellor will challenge you to recognise that your past pains and seemingly negative experiences are the very key to accessing your greatest self.
I want to drown in my tears,And my tears are my prayers.
Sometimes it's your fragrance that comes to me, out of the blue, on a crowded road in a Sunday afternoon.But more often, it's memories of us that cross my mind almost every lone evening.All I want is to lessen the pain I feel every night.But every morning I wake up is another day, hopeless and miserable, with nothing but a deafening silence, a wave of tears, memories and your absence.
Frequently, people confront us who seemed to be egging the world into calling them on their miserable actions so they can have the pleasure of angry vengeance or an excuse to attract attention. Our compassion cannot be giving them what they think they want, since it is unreasonable to want to be hateful.
It's like, when someone asks you how you are and even though you want to say that you feel like shit, that you're miserable, that you cry until you gag and spend most of your time imagining ways to kill yourself, instead you just say, 'Fine, thanks.
In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can't forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It'd be best if I'm destroyed. The best thing is for me just to vanish.
Some clever and honourable nations change their regime from authoritarian to a democratic one, and some weak-kneed dictator lover miserable nations do the exact opposite! Don’t try to look for a character in a person who gave up his freedom, because he does have none!
She had all day every day to figure out some decent and satisfying way to live, and yet all she ever seemed to get for all her choices and all her freedom was more miserable. The autobiographer is almost forced to the conclusion that she pitied herself for being so free.