Quotes from Destroy Me

“And I've fallen.

So hard.

I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen.

And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching.

Love is a heartless bastard.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“People seldom realize that they tell lies with their lips and truths with their eyes all the time.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I almost forget that she still hates me, despite how hard I've fallen for her.
And I've fallen.
So hard.
I've hit the ground.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I’ve come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us week, not our actions.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions.
I lock away the things that do not serve me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“She is a soft, deadly creature. Kind and timid and terrifying. She's completely out of control and has no idea what she's capable of. And even though she hates me, I can't help but be fascinated by her. I'm enchanted by her pretend-innocence; jealous, even, of the power she wields so unwittingly. I want so much to be a part of her world. I want to know what it's like to be in her mind, to feel what she feels. It seems a tremendous weight to carry.
And now she's out there, somewhere, unleashed on society.
What a beautiful disaster.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Because I want her.
Now.
Here.
Everywhere.
I want nothing between us.
I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Watching her talk to someone else made me crazy. I was jealous. Ridiculous. I wanted her to know me; I wanted her to talk to me. And I felt it then: this strange, inexplicable sense that she might be the only person in the world I could really care about.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“These letters are all I have left.
26 friends to tell my stories to.
26 letters are all I need. I can stitch them together to create oceans and ecosystems. I can fit them together to form planets and solar systems. I can use letters to construct skyscrapers and metropolitan cities populated by people, places, things, and ideas that are more real to me than these 4 walls.
I need nothing but letters to live. Without them I would not exist.
Because these words I write down are the only proof I have that I’m still alive.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Torture is not torture when there’s any hope of relief.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“My opinions,” I say to him, quietly this time, “should not so easily break your own. Stand by your convictions. Form clear and logical arguments. Even if I disagree.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Sometimes I wish I could step outside of myself for a while. I want to leave this worn body behind, but my chains are too many, my weights too heavy.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“She searches me with those odd, blue-green eyes and I feel guilty so suddenly, without understanding why. But there’s something about the way she looks at me that always makes me feel insignificant, as if she’s the only one who’s realized I’m entirely hollow inside. She’s found the cracks in this cast I’m forced to wear every day, and it petrifies me. That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“This girl is destroying me. A girl who has spent the last year in an insane asylum. A girl who would try to shoot me dead for kissing her. A girl who ran off with another man just to get away from me. Of course this is the girl I would fall for. I close a hand over my mouth. I am losing my mind.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Sometimes I close my eyes and paint these walls a different color. I imagine I’m wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone’s given me a book to read, a story to take me away form the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don’t belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I’m caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won’t stop suffocating suffocating suffocating. My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Friendship is not a thing I have ever experienced. Not as a child, and not as I am now.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Only an idiot would rely on the energy of a bean or a leaf to stay awake throughout the day.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I will give no one the satisfaction of my death.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“There’s something simmering inside of me. Something I’ve never dared to tap into, something I’m afraid to acknowledge. There’s a part of me clawing to break free from the cage I’ve trapped it in, banging on the doors of my heart, begging to be free. Begging to let go. Every day I feel like I’m reliving the same nightmare. I open my mouth to shout, to fight, to swing my fists, but my vocal cords are cut, my arms are heavy and weighted down as if trapped in wet cement and I’m screaming but no one can hear me, no one can reach me and I’m caught. And it’s killing me. I’ve always had to make myself submissive, subservient, twisted into a pleading, passive mop just to make everyone else feel safe and comfortable. My existence has become a fight to prove I’m harmless, and I’m not a threat, that I’m capable of living among other human beings without hurting them. And I’m so tired I’m so tire I’m so tired I’m so tired and sometimes I get so angry. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Sir, can you hear me?" Another cry. But this time, a voice I don't detest.
"Sire, please, can you hear me-"
"I've been shot, Delalieu," I manage to say. I open my eyes. Look into his watery ones. "I haven't gone deaf.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I have an extremely low threshold for disorder; it offends my very being.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“In just two days, one girl has managed to cripple me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Kenji is a walking paradox of Unflinchingly Serious Person and 12-Year-Old Boy Going Through Puberty all rolled into one.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“That traitorous bastard. The idiot who thinks he's won himself a pretty girl. He has no idea who she is. No idea what she'd about to become.

And if he thinks he's even remotely suited to match her, he's even more of an idiot than I gave him credit for.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“I allowed myself to believe she’d seen a future for us; that she wanted to be with me and simply thought it impossible.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

“Good God, I have taken leave of my senses. I never thank Delalieu. I've likely given the poor man a heart attack.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me

About the author

Popular quotes

“Quentin found it hard not to blame her doctors, and especially her father, for not being open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that there had been nothing wrong with Diana from the beginning. But they hadn't. Faced with the inexplicable, with experiences and behaviors they didn't understand and were frightened by, they had acted swiftly, with all the supposed knowledge of modern-day medicine, to "fix" her "problems."

Even before she hit puberty, for Christ's sake.

And they had left her only half alive. A pale, colorless, vague, and passionless copy of the Diana she was meant to be.

Christ, no wonder she looked out on the world with wary, suspicious eyes. Finally off all the mind-numbing medications, Diana was clearheaded for the first time since childhood. Truly aware for the first time of the world around her. And not just aware, but painfully alert, with the raw-nerved sensitivity of most psychics.

She knew, now. No matter what she was willing to admit aloud or even consciously, she knew now that she had been kept half alive, less than that. Knew that those she had trusted most had betrayed that trust, even if they had done it in the name of love and concern and with all good intentions. They hadn't kept her safe, they had kept her doped up and compliant. They had sought to hammer away all the sharp, unique edges that made her Diana.

So she could be healthy. Like everybody else.

It had been in her voice when she'd told him, a haunted awareness of all she'd lost.

"I'm thirty-three now. You do the math."

He thought it must have been like waking from a coma or a hazy dream to find that everything that had gone before had not been real. The world had turned, time had moved on... and Diana had lost years.

Years.”
― Kay Hooper, quote from Chill of Fear

“Acceptance of the inevitable, a sign of a wise man.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Deal Breaker

“Whenever you give any living creature cause to depend on you, be careful on no account to disappoint it.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess

“Why, you want me to hook you two up?"

Cordy eyed her, then let out a grunt. "Could you? Michael Thorley turned out to be an assclown, and the rest of this place is nothing but a barren wasteland of undateability. The only guy who's shown the slightest amount of interest in me this summer is Mr. Papadopoulos on the third floor of the nursing home. He says I have the ass of a Russian call girl."

"Ah, senility.”
― Gina Damico, quote from Croak

“The mystery of other individuals, señor caballero, is ordinarily grief we neither share nor understand.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.