I'm Already Broken Quotes & Sayings

I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years. — Jean-Paul Sartre

She was too proud to eat her share of what little food we had. She told me she had. She swore she did. But every time I complained about being so hungry it hurt, she always offered me a nut or a partially rotted turnip, claiming she had just found two and already ate hers."

Rose sniffled and wiped her eyes again.

"After she was gone, I left my pride in that little hut and begged my way to Medford. I'd do anything. Once you've spent an afternoon chasing a fly around your house for dinner, once you've eaten spiders whole and drooled over worms found while burying your mother with your bare hands, there's nothing beneath you. All I wanted was to live-I'd forgotten everything else. A clod of dirt doesn't have dreams. A bit of broken stone doesn't understand hope. Each morning, all I wanted was to see the next dawn. — Michael J. Sullivan

I won't let him hurt you again." His breath makes me shiver. A strange sensation, when surrounded with such blazing warmth. "I believe you," I tell him, lying. Because I am weak, I turn in his arms. Because I am weak, I press my lips to his, searching for something to make me stop running, to make me forget. We are both weak, it seems. As his hands run over my skin, I feel a different sort of pain. Worse than Maven's machine, deeper than my nerves. It aches like a hollow, like an empty weight. I am a sword, born of lightning, of this fire - and of Maven's. One already betrayed me, and the other might leave at any moment. But I do not fear a broken heart. I do not fear pain. — Victoria Aveyard

Let Ian laugh. Let him believe pain will ruin me. I know better. I've already been ruined once, and I know how to rise from the ashes. I know how to find my broken pieces. — C.J. Redwine

I have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven. — Guy Sajer

I urge North Korea's leaders to reflect on Burma's experience. While the work of reform is ongoing, Burma has already broken out of isolation and opened the door to a far better future for its people. — Thomas E. Donilon

We were scarecrows in blue uniforms. After a grand total of five days of blackboard instruction and fifty rounds at the NYPD firing range, my new police academy classmates and I were standing out on the sidewalks of central Brooklyn pretending to be police officers. They gave us badges. They gave us handcuffs. They gave us guns - standard police-issue Smith & Wesson .38 Specials. They told us, "Good luck." In early July 1966, riots had broken out in East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, Brooklyn. Hundreds of angry young men were roaming the streets and throwing bottles and rocks. Already they had injured police officers and attempted to flip over a radio car. On one corner, police found eighteen Molotov cocktails. The borough commander was calling for reinforcements - and fast. — Ray Kelly

I can't walk away from you. I tried. I can't do it. Even as I was trying, I knew it was stupid. I already knew I wasn't really going anywhere. God, Hope. I care about you. I don't want to walk away." I coil my fingers in between her braids and twists, holding her head to my chest. "I'm broken, too. I think..." I lick my lips and press them into her hair. "I think we can fix each other. — Cheryl McIntyre

I close my eyes and try to hold back the tears, knowing that they'll just make my head hurt worse than it already does, but I can't stop them. Tears come and they come hard, in huge sobs wracking my broken body.
Fate has once again decided to be cruel to us. To give us a small taste of happiness only to yank it out from under us, and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. — Heather Leigh

It's dark. You exhale a fist of memory. I love you like weathering wood in a room of empty pianos. When you return to something you love, it's already beyond repair. You wear it broken. — James L. White

Here's what we're gonna do. You're going to give me that doubt. You're just going to hand it to me, and I'm going to hold it for you. I'm going to keep it for as long as you need me to. For the rest of our lives. I will be your safe place. The place you get to be soft. Right here, just like this. When you leave my arms, you leave whole. Because you already are.
You're not broken sweetie, you're human. You're incredibly strong. You're a wonder. You'll return to your team as the warrior you've always been. And you'll know that at any time, you can come to me, and you'll know mt arms are strong enough. Sigh — Jo Leigh

He is tired. He is broken. And he doesn't want to fight anymore.
Part of me doesn't either. Part of me wishes I could submit to chains, to captivity and silence. But I have lived that life already, in the mud, in the shadows, in a cell, in a silk dress. I will never submit again. I will never stop fighting.
Neither will Kilorn. Neither will Farley. We will never stop. — Victoria Aveyard

Then it stands to reason that love doesn't make a man less than what he already is."
"It makes him vulnerable."
"Perhaps it does," Ramsey agreed.
"And if his mind is constantly consumed with thoughts of her, then he becomes weak. Is that not so?"
Ramsey smiled. "I'll tell you what is so. You love her, Brodick, and that scares the hell out of you."
"I should have broken your nose. — Julie Garwood

You got beat up. Bones and bruises heal. Those girls didn't win because they didn't do what they wanted. They wanted to break you.
I was already broken.
You're not broken at all. — Tijan

That's how the Sukulowskis got out?" Captain Byner asked. "Yup." Joe lit a cigarette. "Where'd they end up?" Joe tossed his match in the ashtray. "You don't really want to know." Rico said, "Gentlemen, I agree with you. Freddy was a fucking asshole going after Montooth in the first place." Freddy, already aggrieved, looked even more dismayed. "You were." Rico looked Freddy in the eye and formed a circle with the thumb and index of his right hand. "Huge asshole. Size of a fucking paint can." He turned to the other men in the room. "But, gents, we can't let a nigger kill a white man. Even if it's a nigger we like, and I like Montooth Dix. I've broken bread with the man. But still. And we can't let a guy who's not in our thing kill someone who is. No matter what. Dion? Joe? You two taught — Dennis Lehane

Give me one last time," he begged. "Please, please. I beg you." "I - " She stopped and started again. "I'm afraid, Gabriel. You'll break my heart." "Mine is already broken. — Eloisa James

You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has." I touch his shoulder. "We're it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we're the light, and we're spreading. — Pierce Brown

What do I do now?
I didn't think my heart could break any more than it already has.
The pieces still inside of me feel like broken glass.
Every time I take a breath, they stab into me.
It never ends ... — H.M. Ward

In the recurring dream everything has already fallen down, and I'm underneath. I'm crawling, sometimes for days, under the rubble. And as I crawl I realize that this one was the Big One. It was the earthquake that shook the whole world, and every single thing was destroyed. But this isn't the scary part. That part always comes right before I wake up. I am crawling and then suddenly I remember: the earthquake happened years ago. This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming something else. — Miranda July

Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart?
River: Fixing your Bible.
Book: I, um ... What?
River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense.
Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't ...
River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem.
Shepherd Book: Really?
River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat.
Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible.
River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense.
Book: It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you. — Ben Edlund

I feel like, God expects me to be human. I feel like, God likes me just the way I am: broken and empty and bruised. I feel like, God doesn't look at me and wish that I were something else, because He likes me just this way. I feel like, God doesn't want me to close my eyes and pray for Him to make me holy or for Him to make me pure; because He made me human. I feel like, God already knows I'm human ... it is I who needs to learn that. — C. JoyBell C.

I got in my car and followed [Marlon Brando] down to Chinatown, and got about twelve shots. Brando called me over and said, What else do you want that you don't have already? And I said, I'd like a picture without the sunglasses. He said no and punched me right in the jaw, It was so fast I didn't see it coming. Blood was gushing out of my mouth. I drove to Bellevue. The jawbone and five teeth were broken ... To this day he has scars on his knuckles from my teeth. — Ron Galella

Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes. — Ellsworth Kelly

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing, "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy. — Steve Almond

But when I know that the glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious. — Ajahn Chah

Reader, I married him.

It turned out the sounds I heard coming from the attic weren't the screams of Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. It wasn't the wife who burned to death in the fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall and blinded my future husband when he tried to save her.
After we'd first got engaged, he'd had to admit that he was already married, and we'd broken off our engagement. He'd asked me to run away with him anyway. Naturally, I'd refused.
But later, after we were properly married, he insisted that it hadn't happened that way. It turned out there had been no wife. It turned out that it had been a parrot, screaming in the attic. The parrot had belonged to his wife. She had got it in the islands, where she had also contracted the tropical fever that killed her. She'd died long before I came to work for him as a governess. That was never Bertha, in the attic. — Francine Prose

Our hearts have already been broken. Maybe I can help to heal hers, even if it means ripping mine to shreds when she leaves and I have to say good-bye. — Debra Doxer

Would you teach me, Seth?'
Seth smiled and leaned back in his seat.
'You do realise, of course, that you have no idea what you ask of me?' Seth replied after a moment.
'Of course,' Christopher replied quietly. 'Could you tell me?'
'No. That is the problem you see,' Seth said. 'Magic is something you can never prepare someone for. Magic will make you, Christopher. It will find all the secret empty places of longing in you and fill them more surely than any other love. And magic will break your heart.' A slight, rather sad smile crossed Christopher's face for a moment. 'I know what you're thinking. You think your heart is already broken, you think that this crooked and winding way is the only path left for you now. But you're wrong. The heart breaks like every wave on the beach and there's a darkness you'll have to pass through that you can't even see from where you are now. — Lee Morgan

I started writing cheating songs when I was too young to have any idea what I was writing about - broken hearts and things like that. I just think it was something I already knew, something I had experienced in another lifetime. — Willie Nelson

Who's with her?" Roarke asked, though he already knew. It was just like her.
"With her? Oh, ah, hmmm. Webster."
Silence fell, a clatter of broken bricks. Peabody folded her hands in her pockets and prepared for the explosion to follow.
"I see." When Roarke simply turned back to the screen and continued, she didn't know whether to be relieved or scared to death. — J.D. Robb

Raith smiled. "There. You already feel yourself weakening. I've taken thousands like you, lovely child. Taken them and broken them. There was nothing they could do. There is nothing you can do. You were made to feel desire. I was made to use it against you. It is the natural cycle. Life and death. Mating and death. Predator and Prey."
Raith leaned closer with each word, and brushed his lips against Murphy's throat as he spoke. "Born mortal. Born weak. And easily taken."
...
"And that's only a taste, child. When you know what it is to be truly taken later this night, you will understand that your life ended the moment I wanted you. — Jim Butcher

There is a big difference between having your heart broken and being the one responsible for a broken heart. I was twelve years old and had already experienced both. — Eveli Acosta

I just met you and I'm amazed by your already.
Your beauty has me blind to all others.
My eyes will always find you in a crowd.
My favorite part of the day is when I get to hear your laugh.
One day you'll let someone in and he'll be a lucky bastard.
One day you are going to discover how beautiful and strong you are.
I hope that I'm standing right next to you holding your hand when you do. — Kimberly Lauren

If anything, I don't have to convince the American public that we have a broken health-care system. I think the majority of Americans since they have to go through that health-care system, already know it. — Michael Moore

People die, Rachel," Ceri said, her cheeks flushing.
"Not if I can help it," I snapped. "And not of a broken heart. If you could, I'd be dead already. — Kim Harrison

Falling in love for the first time, and then the heartbreak of having it end, is difficult, but I don't think it would ever hurt as much as when my mother was killed in the boating accident. I feel a part of my heart has already been broken, and that place is reserved for mother. — Natasha Gregson Wagner

I was diamond on the outside, and I would not break.
Inside, though, I was already broken. — Shaun David Hutchinson

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened. — Douglas Coupland

Self Help Guru's, what they should really say:

I could change your life with my three-point plan, but you already have to have alot of money and a good support system around you. My plan does not work for broken shattered people. It only works for obtusely bored rich people... Sort of it works. I am not helping the homeless! — Eddie Pepitone

It's not that we don't trust you," Royce said as Hadrian prepared the bow. "It's just that we've learned over the years that honor among nobles is usually inversely proportionate to their rank. As a result, we prefer to rely on more concrete methods for motivations - such as self-preservation. You already know we don't want you dead, but if you have ever been riding full tilt and had a horse buckle under you, you understand that death is always a possibility, and broken bones are almost a certainty."
"There's also the danger of missing the horse completely," Hadrian added. "I'm a good shot, but even the best archers have bad days. So to answer your question - yes, you can control your own horse. — Michael J. Sullivan

It's okay,' he says, eyes closed. He's not even awake. 'It's okay.'
He says these words even in his sleep, like he has said them so often that it's his mouth's default sentiment. All this pain in his life, all this care he doles out to everyone else. And yet he still cracks his broken heart open even wider - wide enough to fit me, too. I wonder how much this must hurt him, the toll it just take to give more of himself to me when he already has so little left to give.
In slumber, his arm stays wrapped around me, encasing me for safekeeping. He would protect me even in his unconscious state, as we lie beneath my ceiling's half-painted sky.
This thought is enough to swell my heart - to swell, and to break. — Emery Lord

"I promised him something," I answer softly. I don't want to admit what he already knows. That there's more going on between me and Morpheus than I ever let on.
"A promise, huh? How romantic." His words slash like knives. He's become a master at wielding more than a brush since he's been here. "So that's why you've crashed our little paradise. To keep your promise to Morpheus."
I wince. "No. I came to rescue you both. You have every right not to believe me ... to be mad at me. I know this has been hell. This place ... it's broken you."
"I was broken before that." His tortured expression delivers the allegation - thanks to you and bug-rot - better than his voice ever could. — A.G. Howard

I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, reasons something solid to cling to, something real, but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, turns out I'm still shattered, scattered, and battered. But you probably already knew that, didn't you? ... You might not be able to help me. That makes me sad, but not for me. It makes me sad for you. It must be frustrating for a shrink to have a patient who's beyond fixing. That first shrink I saw when I got back to Clayton Falls told me no one is a lost cause, but I think that's bullshit. I think people can be so crushed, so broken, that they'll never be anything more than a fragment of a whole person. (129) — Chevy Stevens

I have not been one who believed in the global warming. But I tell you, they are making a convert out of me as these blistering summers. They have broken heat records in a number of cities already this year and broken all-time records and it is getting hotter and the ice caps are melting and there is a build up of carbon dioxide in the air. We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels. — Pat Robertson

But I've already broken the glass; I've given the green away; I've made my choice. — Ally Condie

I told you once I would never let you fall, Aesa ... And you're falling. You just don't see it.'
'No, you're wrong,' I snapped ... 'I've already fallen. You just don't want to see it. — Amber Lynn Natusch

What are you looking at, Matthias?" The low thrum of her voice vibrated straight through him.
He kept his eyes on the ceiling, whispering softly. "Nothing."
"Matthias, are you praying?"
"Possibly."
"For restraint?" she said sweetly.
"You really are a witch."
"I'm not proper, Matthias."
"I am aware of this." Miserably, keenly, hungrily aware.
"And I'm sorry to inform you, but you're not proper either."
His gaze dropped to her now. "I - "
"How many rules have you broken since you met me? How many laws? They won't be the last. Nothing about us will ever be proper," she said. She tilted her face up to his. So close now it was as if they were already touching. "Not the way we met. Not the life we lead. And not the way we kiss. — Leigh Bardugo

Because it was clear to me now that I'd already broken something. — Morgan Matson

I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly. — Ajahn Chah

I always tell our community that we should attract the people Jesus attracted and frustrate the people Jesus frustrated. It's certainly never our goal to frustrate, but it is worth noting that the people who were constantly agitated were the self-righteous, religious elite, the rich, and the powerful. But the people who were fascinated by him, by his love and grace, were folks who were already wounded and ostracized - folks who didn't have much to lose, who already knew full well that they were broken and needed a Savior. — Shane Claiborne

I'm not leaving you. We still have a chance."
"How?"
Kayson's voice echoes his hopelessness. He's already given up.
"Hey, as long as we are still breathing, we still have a chance. If you quit, then you're quitting on me too. — Brandy Nacole

Don't do that," he says. "Don't ask me questions you already know the answers to. Twice I've laid myself bare to you and all it's gotten me was a bullet wound and a broken heart. Don't torture me," he says, meeting my eyes again.
"It's a cruel thing to do, even to someone like me. — Tahereh Mafi

A bum woke up in the gutter right beside where I stood looking across the street at this place. He felt in the waist of his pants and came up with a pint bottle, half full. He tipped it up and it gurgled steadily until he'd emptied it all down into him. I was only twenty-four or -five but I already knew from experience how it tasted. And people who've kissed the feet of Christ know how it tasted. I saw everything there in the gutter
the terror and the promise. Later I spent the morning in the smoky Day Labor Division with better than a hundred men who'd learned how not to move, learned how to stay beautifully still and let their lives hurt them, white men with gray faces and black men with yellow eyes. I worked the rest of the week in a factory without ever comprehending exactly what was manufactured there, and at night I'd get drunk and shut myself in a phone booth and call the woman in Minnesota who'd broken my heart. — Denis Johnson

Attraction

The whites of his eyes
pull me like moons.
He smiles. I believe
his face. Already
my body slips down in the chair:

I recline on my side,
offering peeled grapes.
I can taste his tongue
in my mouth
whenever he speaks.

I suspect he lies.
But my body oils itself loose.
When he gets up to fix a drink
my legs like derricks
hoist me off the seat.
I am thirsty, it seams.

Already I see the seduction
far off in the distance
like a large tree
dwarfed by a rise
in the road.

I put away objections
as quietly as quilts.
Already I explain to myself
how marriages are broken--
accidentally, like arms or legs. — Enid Shomer

Torquil has already broken his fast. Ye will find him in the stable when ye're erady to begin his lessons."
"Already? I'm surprised he's awake. It's still rather early."
"Aye, well, we Highlanders donna lie in bed all day when there is work to be done. — Victoria Roberts

The fallen hazel-nuts, Stripped late of their green sheaths, The grapes, red-purple, Their berries Dripping with wine, Pomegranates already broken, And shrunken fig, And quinces untouched, I bring thee as offering. — Hilda Doolittle

And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven. — Truman Capote

In case you haven't noticed, we're already involved, Finch. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm broken too. — Jennifer Niven

In truth, I'm not my body, my race, religion, or other beliefs, and neither is anyone else. The real self is infinite and much more powerful-a complete and whole entity that isn't broken or damaged in any way. The infinite me already contains all the resources I need to navigate through life, because I'm One with Universal energy. In fact, I am Universal energy. — Anita Moorjani

Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper. — John Fowles

I don't do that kind of negativity. If you put your energy into thinking about how much the fall would hurt, you're already halfway down. — Tana French

I feel small against him, fragile. Like he's realized the secret I've hidden: that I'm breakable, if not already broken. — Katie McGarry

You'll meet a lot of stupid guys. You'll probably get your heart broken more than once. You might reach a point where life seems worthless without him. Maybe you've already hit that point. I can't tell you to to stop crying, because sometimes, crying helps. I can't ask you to smile, because sometimes, it's all you can do to just breathe. I can't make you happy, because that's something you have to do yourself. But I can promise you one thing. I will be there for you. I will listen if you need to rant. I will hug you if you're feeling alone. I will drive you away if you need to escape. I will buy you coffee, goddammit, if you need some. I will be there for you, because you've always been there for me. — Alysha Speer

I once believed in faith - that if I patiently waited, something good will happen. But at the end of the chapter, I found myself devastated. Years have gone by and I'm back at chapter one again. I've tried several times already and ended up in the same ending. It was always a different title, same story; different choices made but ending up with the same plot and finale. I grew tired of this never ending maze, wandering endlessly and finally giving up faith. — Raphael Paolo Augustine Camanag

But this is what I also thought as I watched the waves of trash crash over the cracked and broken road: that for the rest of us, Arizona would always be one of our places now. It would be on the list of things we own in our heads. Don't we all have this list? It's like, everything that secretly belongs to us - a favorite color, or springtime, or a house we don't live in anymore. We all gained Arizona by coming here, but for the people who already lived here, we could only take something away. — Adam Rex

If [Harry Potter] knew what he means to us, to the lowly, the enslaved, we dregs of the magical world! Dobby remembers how i was when He-Who-Must-No-Be-Named was at the height of his powers, sir! We house-elves were treated like vermin, sir! Of course, Dobby is still treated like that, sir, but mostly, sir, life has improved for my kind since you triumphed over He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry Potter survived, and the Dark Lord's power was broken, and it was a new dawn, ir, and Harry Pote shone like a beacon of hope for those of us who thought the dark days would never end, sir. . . .And now, at Hogwarts, terrible things are to happen, are perhaps happening already, and Dobby cannot let Harry Potter stay here now that history is to repeat itself, now that the Chamber of Secrets is open once more - — J.K. Rowling

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.
The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other. — Orson Scott Card

I broke his Bible box into bits and lit a fire and laid his body beside it and felt where the bones were broken in his back and chest and legs and licked the blood from his mouth and tried to give him my breath and I would have given him one of my legs and one of my arms and one of my kidneys and half of my liver and four pints of my blood and all easy for I had already given him my heart. — Jeanette Winterson

Once I figured out what I was going to do with my life, I was definitely going to get a dog. Maybe I'd get a rescue. I liked the idea of an older dog that was already broken in and just needed a loving home. The irony was, that wasn't too different from how I was feeling about myself. — Dorothea Benton Frank

I thought that Uncle Julian was probably really very happy, with both Constance and Aunt Dorothy to take care of him, and I told myself that long thin things would remind me to be kinder to Uncle Julian; this was to be a day of long thin things, since there had already been a hair in my toothbrush, and a fragment of a string was caught on the side of my chair and I could see a splinter broken off the back step. — Shirley Jackson

Parade my trouble in front of you guys? Make you realize that my heart is broken ... that as long as I live I'll have chains dragging me down to the oceans of sad tears that my feet are wet in already. — Jack Kerouac

Looking back, I wonder if mom saw it in my eyes: the storm clouds gathering, the dry crackle of electricity in the air. But it was already too late. No warning sirens were going to save me. I guess you never really know the danger, not until you're the one left, huddled on the ground, surrounded by the pieces of your broken heart. — Melody Grace