“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
Tahereh Mafi
Born place: The United States
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“human Reason cannot be reduced to the result of evolutionary adaptation; art is not just a heightened procedure of providing sensual pleasures, but a medium of Truth;”
― Slavoj Žižek, quote from The Parallax View
“It’s not like Father to be late,”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Codex
“But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they humbly say that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beautiful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in question is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations.
[...]
Listen to this. I know a banker, grey-haired business man, who has a gift for
writing stories. He employs this gift in his idle hours, and some of his stories are of the
first rank. But despiteI say despite-this excellent gift his withers are by no means
unwrung: on the contrary, he has had to serve a prison sentence, on anything but trifling
grounds. Yes, it was actually first in prison that he became conscious of his gift, and his
experiences as a convict are the main theme in all his works. One might be rash enough
to conclude that a man has to be at home in some kind of jail in order to become a poet.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories
“I just want you to know that I love you with everything I am—a million times a million and to the moon and back.”
― Laura Miller, quote from My Butterfly
“love. “In time you’ll know joy again.” Joy? I wanted to argue with him. It didn’t seem likely or even possible. One doesn’t heal from this kind of pain. I remembered how my family and friends had struggled to find the right words to comfort me. But there are no words … there simply are no words.”
― Debbie Macomber, quote from The Inn at Rose Harbor
Illuminations
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Zeitoun
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White Night
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