I Have Lost Myself Quotes & Sayings

All I could remember was her smile. Unable to picture the loved face, however strenuously I tried to make myself remember it, I was for ever irritated to find that my memory had retained exact replicas of the striking and futile faces of the roundabout man and the barley-sugar woman, just as the bereaved, who each night search their dreams in vain for the lost beloved, will find their sleep is peopled by all manner of exasperating and unbearable intruders, whom they have always found, even in the waking world, more than dislikable. Faced with the impossibility of seeing clearly the object of their grief, they come close to accusing themselves of not grieving, just as I was tempted to believe that my inability to remember the features of Gilberte's face meant that I had forgotten her and had stopped loving her. — Marcel Proust

Syn pulled Furi to his chest. "Furi, I want you to go back through the bar and go wait at my place. I'm going to have a little chat with your ex-husband," Syn said extra loudly.

Furi huffed in annoyance, "Syn, I took six months of self-defense courses at the YMCA this year. I can fight for myself."

Syn looked at Furi like he'd lost his damn mind. "At the Y? Well hell, that's great Furious. If you ever get jumped by the Village People, feel free to pull out those moves. As for now, I want you to take your karate-kicking-YMCA-going-ass back to my apartment," Syn snarled at Furi, urging him toward the door, having neither the time nor the patience to argue with his ridiculous pride. Thankfully, with one final glare Furi went back into the pub. When Syn turned back, God and Day were looking back and forth between him and his two foes.


"What's going on here, fellas?" God asked casually, not acknowledging Syn. — A.E. Via

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well. — Erin Morgenstern

It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made. — Voltaire

I've never been good at writing letters, so I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not able to make myself clear.
I've been thinking about you constantly since I left, wondering why the journey I'm on seemed to have led through you. I know my journey's not over yet, and that life is a winding path, but I can only hope it somehow circles back to the place I belong.
That's how I think of it now. I belong with you.
It is almost as if a part of you is with me. I want to believe that's true. No, change that - I know it's true. Before we met, I was as lost as a person could be, and yet you saw something in me that somehow gave me direction again. It was you, that I had been looking for all along. And it's you who is with me now.
I realize that I miss you more than I've ever missed anyone. In the short time we spent together, we had what most people can only dream about, and I'm counting the days until I can see you again. Never forget how much I love you. — Unknown

For the first time since Ben died, I look like a widow. For the first time since I lost him, I feel like I recognize the person in the mirror. There I am, grief-stricken and un-whole. Widowed. It's such a relief to see myself this way. I have felt so insecure in my widowness that seeing myself look like a widow comforts me. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

When standing in the middle of the marvelous mountains and deep forests, in the earthy smell of all beginnings and endings, I often find myself asking what I have if all my possessions were taken away. Without money, car, house; or power and fame, if there are any, who am I?
In that very moment, being away from the external voices and left alone in nature, I find my answer. — Zi Nguyen

A sense of mission lost
in ink's
jagged outcrops.
I was trying to tell myself
what I must have known
before
in a form
I wouldn't recognize at first. — Rae Armantrout

truth is, I look upon both candidates in the same light; and should think myself a traitor to the constitution of my country, if I voted for either. If every elector would bring the same consideration home to his conscience, we should not have such reason to exclaim against the venality of pts.5 But we are all a pack of venal and corrupted rascals; so lost to all sense of honesty, and all tenderness of character, that, in a little time, I am fully persuaded, nothing will be infamous but virtue and public-spirit. — Tobias Smollett

I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map ... nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail on vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home. — Rebecca Solnit

Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy. — Roberto Bolano

I'm convinced that people see the ghosts of themselves all the time, but most just chose to block them out. The words don't even make sense to me, and I know it's true. When I was seven years old I saw the ghost of myself at the age of eighteen. Ever since that day I've kicked myself for not asking questions. I've no idea what my eighteen-year-old self could have told me at that point - perhaps nothing at all. Still, I can't help but think of it as a lost opportunity. Somehow there was a slight fluctuation in the current, and two of me bled through the fabric at once.
Trying to figure out the meaning behind such events can drive you mad, because there is no answer. Perhaps it was some sort of hiccup. Then again, perhaps I was making some Herculean efforts to reach out to myself, and that was all I could manage. — Damien Echols

You enchant me. I am completely lost in my love for you, but in that love I have truly found myself. Under your guidance, I walk a new path, and I want to walk it by your side. Your presence in my life will give it the greatest meaning. To you I offer all my heart and a lifetime's unwavering loyalty. You will always mean everything to me. Will you marry me? — Madeline Kennet

It is not as if an 'I' exists independently over here and then simply loses a 'you' over there, especially if the attachment to 'you' is part of what composes who 'I' am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who 'am' I, without you? When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost 'you' only to discover that 'I' have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost 'in' you, that for which I have no vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as *the tie* by which those terms are differentiated and related. — Judith Butler

I believe that a good children's book should appeal to all people who have not completely lost their original joy and wonder in life. The fact is that I don't make books for children at all. I make them for that part of us, of myself and of my friends, which has never changed, which is still a child. — Leo Lionni

One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused. Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering. — Paul Kalanithi

I Lost Everything,
I Have Found Myself. — Jalaluddin Rumi

I lost control of myself a couple times in the playoffs. I have to keep cooler in the future. — Dirk Nowitzki

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) — Jonas Mekas

To me, Tris has always seemed magnetic in a way I could not describe, and that she was not aware of. I have never feared or hated her for it, the way Peter does, but then, I have always been in a position of strength myself, not threatened by her. Now that I have lost that position, I can feel the tug toward resentment, as strong and sure as a hand around my arm. — Veronica Roth

Sometimes when i am alone out there, or even here in my house, it seems almost possible that i might lose myself: there in that silence where there is no need of words or discourse. i have heard it said that there are men who have lost their minds to it, reason drained away into the dissolving space of sea and sky. And indeed while there are times when this place is full of life, a raucous cavalcade, even then there is a sense of emptiness, as if some ancient silence lingers in the fabric of this place, something alien, and unknowable. — Thomas F. Monteleone

I never really took into account the number of homeless families. As a kid, we used to feed the hungry at my church every other Saturday, and one day this kid from my school was there. Somewhere between that moment of realization and appreciation for what my Dad sacrificed for us to have, and me becoming "Anthony Mackie" I lost it. This movie [Shelter] really made me realize that, and it was very humbling and very sickening to see that within myself. — Paul Bettany

On this thanksgiving, I would like to thank that one girl, who never lost hope despite all odds were against her, who always worked, and moved on, despite losing all friends just after leaving school, a time when you need friends the most! Who had immense strength and will-power and so much inspiration inside her that she ended up being happy, satisfied, and successful, all alone.
That one girl who always smiles in the mirror, and says, 'Bitch, you have a long way to go, and you gotta travel all alone, depending upon anyone will make you weak, so buck up, there's a lot you gotta do!' On this thanksgiving, I thank myself, my soul for being so majestically robust!
I would have thanked other people, but sadly, nobody ever helped me, more than I helped myself ... — Mehek Bassi

To restore you and myself, I return to my state of garden and shade, cool reality, I hardly exist and if I do exist it's with delicate care. Surrounding the shade is a teeming, sweaty heat. I'm alive. But I feel I've not yet reached my limits, bordering on what? Without limits, the adventure of a dangerous freedom. But I take the risk, I live taking it. I'm full of acacias swaying yellow, and I, who have barely begun my journey, begin it with a sense of tragedy, guessed what lost ocean my life steps will take me to. And crazily I latch onto the corners of myself, my hallucinations suffocate me with their beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all this I gained when I stopped loving you. — Clarice Lispector

I keep finding myself stifled by the company of others and then crippled by loneliness when I leave them. I am terrified and I don't even know of what, because I have lost everything already. — Veronica Roth

Eye on the shuttlecock, she ran forward, raised her battledore high, and slammed right into Henry Weston's chest. The wind knocked from her, Emma lost her balance and might have fallen had not Mr. Weston's arms shot out and caught her about the waist and shoulder. "Oh," she cried, embarrassed to have plowed into the man. Embarrassed to find his arms around her. Embarrassed to find she liked it. "I'm so sorry," she blurted, pushing away from him. "Don't be. I admire your singular focus. My goodness, Miss Smallwood, where is the timid little creature who flinched at every flying bird as though it were a cricket ball headed for her nose?" Emma straightened and righted her off-kilter bonnet. "I was determined not to embarrass myself," she admittedly breathlessly. "Only to do just that." He chuckled, and their eyes met in a moment of shared levity. Then he sobered. "Thank you for the laugh, Miss Smallwood. Just what I needed after yesterday. — Julie Klassen

I have come to realize that what is important is not my loss and the pain it caused but the fact that I have picked myself up (with help), taken the memories and the lessons, and becoming the woman they have wanted me to become.

The fact that I have lost those I love is not what defines me. What defines me is the fact that I have survived and now live, despite the pain and with memory of their love. — Heather Ward

Today I got so annoyed with myself that I lost my patience and walked away from a game that, with hindsight, I should have continued [on quitting a game early on against Hendry] — Ronnie O'Sullivan

Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page closer to what you have in your mind. The chances are that you'll never make them identical. That's one reason I'm still hitting the keyboard. Obsessed by the secrets of my past, I try to put metaphorical versions of them on the page, but each time, no matter how honest and hard my effort, what's in my mind hasn't been fully expressed, compelling me to keep trying. To paraphrase a passage from John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse," I'll die telling stories to myself in the dark. But there's never enough time. There was never enough time. — David Morrell

Necromancy?" The mantis shook his head. "I have laid a ghost or two, and I questioned one once." He swirled the wine in his cup and peered into it, seeing more in the flickers of firelight reflected there than I would have, I think. At last he said, "Our ghosts are becoming worse, have you noticed? It used to be they were no more than lost souls who had wandered away from the Lands of the Dead, or perhaps never reached them, spirits no worse dead than they had been alive, and frequently better. Such were the ghosts of which my masters told me when I was younger; such, indeed, were those I myself encountered as a young man. Now something evil is moving among them. — Gene Wolfe

I am not an adult, that's my explanation of myself. Except when I am working on a set, I have all the inhibitions and shyness of the bashful, backward child, unless I have something very much in common with a person, I am lost. I am swallowed up in my own silence. — Jean Arthur

I never did thank you," Breeze said.
"For what, Lord Breeze?"
"For pulling me out of myself," Breeze said. "For forcing me to get up, a year ago, and keep going. If
you hadn't helped me, I don't know that I would ever have gotten over ... what happened."
Sazed nodded. On the inside, however, his thoughts were more bitter. Yes, you saw destruction and
death, my friend. But the woman you love is still alive. I could have come back too, if I hadn't lost
her. I could have recovered, as you did. — Brandon Sanderson

Look! I have here a number of white pebbles. I let them soak in the shade, then hold them in the hollow of my hand and wait until their soothing coolness is exhausted. Then I begin once more, changing the pebbles and putting back those that have lost their coolness to soak in the shade again ... Time passes and the evening comes on ... Take me away; I cannot move of myself. Something in my will is broken. — Andre Gide

I let myself feel good for no reason. I let joy happen right there and then, and it's inside me and around me, it's the lights on the road ahead, the clean black of the night, the cold air coming through the window. It's like hearing a song for the first time and being struck by it, haunted by it, wanting to hunt it down and catch it, because the song sums up something you didn't know you wanted to say, giving you chills and goose bumps. But even as you find out what it's called, and you're thinking you'll download it, you've already lost. Because the feeling was right then and there and it's already fading like a dream.
You just have to see those times for what they are: a chance to look down at your life. And when you do, you see it's a skin made up of shiny little moments. — Kirsty Eagar

I think I've always had that bird's-eye view of myself. I think it's an actor trait ... Sometimes it's best just to get lost out there, but other times you have to be aware of where the light's hitting you. — Allison Williams

In the scheme of life, in emotion and loss, I responded the way I did. I lost. I shouldn't have responded that way. I've had some people tell me that I did a great thing - sticking up for myself - but to me, personally, with the way that I handled my emotions, I lost. But I learned. That will not happen again. — Mike Tyson

ON THE RETURN OF A BOOK
LENT TO A FRIEND
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend's friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition.
I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff.
WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting: I never thought to look upon its pages again.
BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again.
PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed. — Christopher Morley

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, "I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again." Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she's going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room and reading in bed. "Why don't you go and touch your bases?" she'll ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves. — Roger Ebert

When I think of myself at 15, even 17, I could simply not have done this work on an international level and travel all the time, take care of myself and not feel lost. I feel very happy that this is happening now, and not 10 years ago, as I feel stronger as a person. — Saskia De Brauw

We all jumped - a cab with its light on skidded across the lane to us, throwing up a fan of sewer-smelling water. "Watch it!" said Goldie, leaping aside as the taxi plowed to a stop - and then observing that my mother had no umbrella. "Wait," he said, starting into the lobby, to the collection of lost and forgotten umbrellas that he saved in a brass can by the fireplace and re-distributed on rainy days. "No," my mother called, fishing in her bag for her tiny candy-striped collapsible, "don't bother, Goldie, I'm all set - " Goldie sprang back to the curb and shut the taxi door after her. Then he leaned down and knocked on the window. "You have a blessed day," he said. iii. I LIKE TO THINK of myself as a perceptive person (as — Donna Tartt

I have lost confidence in myself. — Robert Louis Stevenson

You said you have faith in us. You told me to come to you when I was ready to be fearless. The truth is, I don't know if I can be fearless. I've lost myself, Reid, and I'm still so scared.
But I'm ready to try. If you still want to, I'm ready. — Tammara Webber

One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I'm going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I'll have lost nothing - writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off. — Lawrence Block

Gacela of the Flight"

I have lost myself in the sea many tunes
with my ear full of freshly cut flowers,
with my tongue full of love awl agony.
I have lost myself in the sea many times
as I lose myself in the heart of certain children.

There is no one who in giving a kiss
does not feel the smile of faceless people,
and no one who in touching a newborn child
forgets the motionless skulls of horses.

Because the roses search in the forehead
for a hard landscape of hone
and the hands of man hate no other purpose
than to imitate the roots below the earth.

As I lose myself in the heart of certain children,
I have lost myself in the sea many times.
Ignorant of the water I go seeking
a death full of light to consume me. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I sometimes have moments of such despair, such despair ... Because in those moments I start to think that I will never be capable of beginning to live a real life; because I have already begun to think that I have lost all sense of proportion, all sense of the real and the actual; because, what is more, I have cursed myself; because my nights of fantasy are followed by hideous moments of sobering! And all the time one hears the human crowd swirling and thundering around one in the whirlwind of life, one hears, one sees how people live - that they live in reality, that for them life is not something forbidden, that their lives are not scattered for the winds like dreams or visions but are forever in the process of renewal, forever young, and that no two moments in them are ever the same; while how dreary and monotonous to the point of being vulgar is timorous fantasy, the slave of shadow, of the idea ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell.
Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry.
... The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life.
It wasn't comforting. — Arthur Nersesian

I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.
If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I have not lost my fascination with death. I have not become a noticeably less intense person. I have not, nor will I ever, completely lose the longing for that something, that thing that I believe will fill an emptiness inside me. I do believe that the emptiness was made greater by the things that I did to myself. — Marya Hornbacher

I'm in good shape. My cancer means I have lost a lot of organs and I'm a lot lighter. I have devoted myself to yoga and I'm doing handstands. — Eve Ensler

After the Olympics and being on such a high and then losing in the World Championships, I was distraught. But now, looking back on it, I think it was the biggest blessing. I was going into every fight thinking I have to win because I am Olympic champion and putting too much pressure on myself. I lost my hunger and stopped enjoying my taekwondo. — Jade Jones

I am the last of the Kerluhm. The Ifayle, who heeded our first summons, are all but destroyed. Those few that remain cannot extricate themselves from the conflict. I myself did not expect to survive the attempt. Yet I have.'
'A horrific conflict indeed,' Lady Envy quietly observed. 'Where does it occur?'
'The continent of Assail. Our losses: twenty-nine thousand eight hundred and fourteen Kerluhm. Twenty-two thousand two hundred Ifayle. Eight months of battle. We have lost this war.'
Lady Envy was silent for a long moment, then she said, 'It seems you've finally found a Jaghut Tyrant who is more than your match, Lanas Tog.'
The T'lan Imass cocked her head. 'Not Jaghut. Human. — Steven Erikson

I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us. — Gerhard Richter

When the piece of a body is left (or a home is left) then the body begins being a constellation: one piece is there! one piece is there! If I leave my hair in the comb in my mother's house & walk out the door to go to the airport, then all of a sudden the body is everything between me & that lost piece. The body is made up, then, of roads & crickets & azucena & mud. How large we are. How ramshackle, how brilliant, how haphazardly & strangely rendered we are. Gloriously, fantastically mixed & monstered. I have been asking myself to be more attentive & porous - to pay attention to the way every inch of me is animal, every inch of me is earth. — Aracelis Girmay

Who Do You Turn To? By Sydney Baker

When you've lost all of your hope,
Who do you turn to?
When your heart turns black because of
The torture that you have been forced to face,
Who do you turn to?
When you find yourself trapped in your mind,
Drowning in a pool of sorrow,
Who do you turn to?
I do not know the answer to these questions,
Seeing that I am still trying to figure them out myself,
But I'm asking you.
So, when you've lost all hope.
And your heart is black because of the pain you've been faced with.
And you're trapped and drowning in your dark, clouded mind.
Who do you turn to? — Deanna Frances

I have, he went on, betrayed myself with
belief, deluded myself with love
tricked myself with sex.
the bottle is damned faithful, he said,
the bottle will not lie — Charles Bukowski

I have lost and loved and won and cried myself to the person I am today. — Charlotte Eriksson

I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense and - you have to make your own decisions as to what the president knows - (know) this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything as indicated by the extreme violence in Iraq yesterday, — Harry Reid

So now I ask you, what will happen to me? I have fulfilled my purpose, but I can no longer cease to exist by myself. I have inherited Calandria May's sorrow, and am lost myself without the purpose I once had. I can never be a ship again. So please, I beg you, shut me down now. I never wanted to have a soul. — Karl Schroeder

At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervour of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;
and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;
before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass. — H.D.

I fell in love with her for her sense of humour. If she ever lost her sense of humour, I would have to dump her. Then I'd kill myself because I couldn't live without her. — Dean Koontz

Every Christmas now for years, I have found myself wondering about the point of the celebration. As the holiday has become more ecumenical and secular, it has lost much of the magic that I remember so fondly from childhood. — Whitley Strieber

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? — Jonathan Safran Foer

All was strange in a fog, buildings grew vague, human beings groped and became lost, the landmarks, the compass points, by which they navigated melted into nothingness and the world was transfigured into a country of the blind. But if the sighted became blind, then the blind - and for some odd reason I have always regarded myself as one of the blind - the blind became sighted, and I remember felling at home in the fog, happily at ease in the murk and gloom that so confused my neighbors. — Patrick McGrath

I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us. — James Glaeg

Jacques." She hesitated, wanting to touch him, needing to touch him, but afraid of being lost in the sexual lure she couldn't seem to resist. "How do I know if I'm the one thinking for myself when you're always with me, always sharing my mind?"
"You will have to figure that out for yourself, Shea." His black eyes moved lovingly over her face. "You know me better than anyone, and I have never tried to hide anything from you. If you brand me a monster, even I will believe you." His smile was gentle and reassuring. — Christine Feehan

When I feel betrayed, I cut that person out of my life to protect myself from getting hurt anymore. So I stopped seeing Jennifer after that, and I lost one of the only people in my life who truly seemed to have loved me. A — Jenna Jameson

I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself. — Franz Grillparzer

Stein lifted his hand. "And do you know how many opportunities I let escape; how many dreams I had lost that had come in my way?" He shook his head regretfully. "It seems to me that some would have been very fine - if I had made them come true. Do you know how many? Perhaps I myself don't know. — Joseph Conrad

He was addicted to me
and now he has gone cold turkey.
He used to send me fifty texts a day.
And now he is ignoring me.
It's like I was once his Barack Obama.
And now I am John McCain,
conceding defeat like a sad-face sock puppet, knowing I have sold the best of myself.
He, my electorate,
not only does not want me,
he actively feels pity. — Emma Forrest

No need to mince words. And you don't need to force yourself to like me. No one likes me now. It's only to be expected. I don't even like myself much. I used to have a few really good friends. You were one of them. But at a certain stage in life I lost them. Like how Shiro at a certain point lost that special spark. ... But you can't go back. Can't return an item you've already opened. You just have to make do. — Haruki Murakami

I quite lost myself, gazing at this work of art ... It thrilled me, that sculpture. For one thing, it reminded me that in my new life, I may have other such experiences. I needn't always be an ignorant girl. The world will offer itself to me like a chalice brimming with immortal wine, and I will quaff from it. — Laura Amy Schlitz

All my life, I [Pari] have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank, behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath. — Khaled Hosseini

I was lieing to myself when I thought I was lost, I have never been lost - I just wasn't ready to be found. — Nikki Rowe

This was to me a far more terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For though, Lord help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of decent or godly living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a certain goodness of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very sorry of all that I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost wholly: having in place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I am not, as I have before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what I have just written may not be readily understood. — Rudyard Kipling

Whatever this might have been for you before now baby, there is no trying or going slow. I know you felt it; it was all over your face. I feel like I just found a piece of myself that has been lost forever. A piece of the puzzle that I didn't even know was missing until you walked into my life. This, us ... baby, I will work as hard as I can and then some to prove to you that you have nothing to fear. — Harper Sloan

Sometimes...I lose myself in looking back upon the ocean which I have passed, and now and then find myself surprised by a tear in reflecting upon the friends I have lost, and the scenes of distress that I have witnessed, and which I was unable to relieve.

- Dr. Benjamin Rush — Jim Murphy

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Every inch of land there is so contested," I observed, more to myself than to him. "How many lives have been lost fighting over Jerusalem? Yet it is not special in terms of architecture, or location, or works of art. — Margaret George

Tragedy is the common lot of man. 'So many people have lost children' I remind myself. pp 178-179
This tragedy is such an inextricable part of my story that it cannot be left out of an honest record. Suffering - no matter how multiplied - is always individual. p 179 — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath ... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again. — Reinhold Messner

I have won important things for myself, but I'm going to destroy them, because I tell myself they have lost their meaning. I know that is not true. I know they are important, and that if I destroy them, I'll be destroying myself, as well. — Paulo Coelho

Karma Police

Karma police
arrest this man,
he talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge,
he's like a detuned radio.

Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

Karma police
I've given all I can,
it's not enough,
I've given all I can
but we're still on the payroll.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself. — Radiohead

When we started filming, I tried to keep myself well under the radar so that the powers that be wouldn't notice that I hadn't lost the weight they'd asked me to. I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with, but I carried about half of them in my face. I think they may have put those buns on me so they might function as bookends, keeping my face right where it was, between my ears and no bigger. — Carrie Fisher

The more freedom I allow myself as a writer to wander, become lost and go into uncertain territory - and I am always trying to go to the more awkward place, the more difficult place - the more frightening it is, because I have no plan. — Nicole Krauss

When I'm travelling, I feel like the secret to my life, to myself, to really becoming, is one step ahead. It's in the next destination, the next town I get lost in, the next stranger I talk to. It's always next but never here ...
I like having hope. And I hope I find what I'm looking for before I have to leave. — Karina Halle

I have seen myself lose intolerance, narrowness, bigotry, complacence, pride and a whole bushel-basket of other intellectual vices through my contact with Nature and with men. And when you take weeds out of a garden it gives you room to grow flowers. So, every time I lost a little self-satisfaction, or arrogance, I could plant some broadness or love of my own in its place, and after a while the garden of my mind began to bloom and be fragrant and I found myself better equipped for my work and more useful to others as a consequence. — Luther Burbank

I used to want to kill myself because I had lost so much of who I knew I was because of all the other invalidation from people. It sends you spiraling where you're like, Wait, I know I have this quality, I know what my integrity is - until you're being fed all this false information about yourself. You start to wonder why. You don't feel good about yourself because you no longer believe in yourself. — Tyler Blackburn

I've walked these streets, in a carnival of sights to see. All the cheap thrill seekers, the vendors & the dealers, they crowded around me. Have I been blind? Have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind? Hypnotized, mesmerized, by what my eyes have seen? I've walked these streets, in a spectacle of wealth & poverty. In the diamond market, the scarlet welcome carpet that they just rolled out for me. — Natalie Merchant

It was sinister, overpowering; it was like a troubled dream conjured by the evil thoughts of a past day. There was no suggestion of ultimate hope, and no possibility of escape. It was a terrible place. I sat up on the deck with my chin in my hands, looking in front of me thinking of nothing, my heart heavy, longing for some nameless thing that I could not explain even to myself. I did not want to feel depressed like this. I wanted to laugh, and not to care about a thought, and to be with people who did not matter, and to have some fun taking that girl ashore. I did not want to be in a lost mood, wretched and distressed. I wished Gudvangen was different, and the mountains wider apart, and the sun shining in a clear sky, and the blue water warm and shallow. — Daphne Du Maurier

Something strange is happening to me: I find myself becoming lighter and less cynical. People use sarcasm and I don't immediately pick up on it, because I don't use it anymore. When people do, it's as if I'm hearing a language I spoke fluently in my childhood, but have since lost. And I just find Woody Allen creepy. — Mara Wilson

I felt instantly at home, and wanted only to dismiss Alistair, along with the rest of Justice Hall, that I might have a closer look at the shelves.I had to content myself instead with a strolling perusal, my hands locked behind my back to keep them from reaching out for Le Morte D'Arthur, Caxton 1485 or the delicious little red-and-gilt Bestiary, MS Circa 1250 or ... If I took one down, I should be lost. So I looked, like a hungry child in a sweet shop, and trailed out on my guide's heels with one longing backward glance. — Laurie R. King

I have never worked for fame or praise, and shall not feel their loss as I otherwise would. I have never for a moment lost sight of the humble life I was born to, its small environments, and the consequently little right I had to expect much of myself, and shall have the less to censure, or upbraid myself with for the failures I must see myself make. — Clara Barton

Nicky, ten, reported in an offhand way (while I was rushing to make dinner and go out) that three of his textbooks were missing and I had to send in nine dollars. I totally blew up. My first impulse was to hit him or punish him. But, even though I was over the edge with anger, I somehow managed to get hold of myself and start my sentences with the word "I." I think I was screaming as loud as is humanly possible: "I am furious! I am enraged! Three books are lost and now I have to cough up nine dollars for it! I'm so angry I feel like I'm going to explode! And to hear this when I'm rushing to make dinner and go out, and now I — Anonymous

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day
I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing
it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.)
But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and
the catch-22
I craved Andie to make me feel better,
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. — Gillian Flynn

It was the end for me. And yet not an end. In all the years which have since elapsed she remains the woman I loved and lost, the unattainable one [ ... ] I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.
- Henry Miller, Stand Still like the Hummingbird (1962) — Henry Miller

I have loved and lost in so many different ways. And I have died endless deaths ... So when I ask myself, the question today, who am I? My answer is ... I do not know. — Patti Roberts

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled. — Diane Setterfield

The night is about to lull everything and everyone to sleep. I stretch myself at the window and open it so that the books can breathe fresh damp air. I suspect that books need to breathe like people, and I think they tolerate damp better than people say. There is no doubt that they stare rather sadly at the trees out in the garden, as if they have a vague recollection of relationship with them, and sighs are borne from the pages to the damp trunks and branches.
I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off from their roots in a wild whirlwind eons ago - that is my thory of evolution. — Gyrdir Eliasson

I had injected more of myself than I had ever intended into our nonexistent relationship. Now I would have to relocate the bits and pieces of myself that I had lost, and put myself back together, like a waterlogged puzzle whose pieces didn't quite fit anymore. — Catherine Lowell

I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding - certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever. — Jane Austen