She's Dead Inside Quotes & Sayings

Lena is sure that other people don't have many selves. She is terrified that she doesn't have a core self, an essential Lena. She feels that she used to but that she lost it along the way, that at some point it became buried, suffocated, and died, because when she looks beneath the chattering of the selves, nothing is there. Maybe the fractured feeling is taking hold because something is dead inside her, or missing. — Haley Tanner

She smiled, lifted her arm, and tugged on a couple of his pain-in-the-ass curls, her expression tender enough to bring him back to cold reality. He was an ex-cop. She was the president's daughter. He was scrap metal. She was pure gold. Beyond all that, he had a dead zone a mile wide inside him, while she bubbled with life. "Lucy ... "
"Oh lord ... " She rolled her eyes and flopped to her back. "Here we go. The speech." She deepened her voice in exaggerated imitation of him. "Before this goes any further, Lucy, I need to make sure you don't get the wrong idea. I'm a cowboy, wild and free. No little filly can ever tame a man like me." She sneered. "As if I'd want to. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Dead Butterfly
By Ellen Bass
For months my daughter carried
a dead monarch in a quart mason jar.
To and from school in her backpack,
to her only friend's house. At the dinner table
it sat like a guest alongside the pot roast.
She took it to bed, propped by her pillow.
Was it the year her brother was born?
Was this her own too-fragile baby
that had lived - so briefly - in its glassed world?
Or the year she refused to go to her father's house?
Was this the holding-her-breath girl she became there?
This plump child in her rolled-down socks
I sometimes wanted to haul back inside me
and carry safe again. What was her fierce
commitment? I never understood.
We just lived with the dead winged thing
as part of her, as part of us,
weightless in its heavy jar. — Ellen Bass

She took his hand, squeezed it, held it, and then, all at once, she let it drop. But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. — Philip K. Dick

She falls back like a dead weight. The red hair loosens from the hair band and spreads in the colorful surface of the pillows, her white body is in sharp contrast, the gleam in her bloodshot eyes becomes intense and shines. My aunt, lying like this, looks like a goddess in an orgasm, only that, inside, she is suffering. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. The same is happening to us, we're really disappearing. I think of the matter of our bodies, changeable, disappearing in the particles of the air while we breathe. In this room, everywhere, we are printed on the walls, in the air that settles on things. I breathe and look at her. I'm stuck in her. — Pat R

Most of being young, she had always thought, was playing a game of elimination with an army of different selves until you settled on one, usually by circumstance. But what made her grin, sitting across a starched white tablecloth from a man who seemed to actually listen to her, was the feeling that all those other selves weren't dead. They were still alive - multitudes of them, waiting inside her. — Ted Thompson

I said, 'Who killed him?' and he said 'I don't know who killed him, but he's dead all right,' and it was dark and there was water standing in the street and no lights or windows broke and boats all up in the town and trees blown down and everything all blown and I got a skiff and went out and found my boat where I had her inside Mango Key and she was right only she was full of water. — Ernest Hemingway,

You can come out, and we will end it, cleanly, or you can die in there, of hunger and of fear. And when you are dead your circle will mean nothing, and we will tear out your heart and take your soul for a keepsake."
"P'raps it will be like that," I said, to the darkness and the shadows, "and p'raps it won't. And p'raps if it is, it would have been like that anyway. I don't care. I'm still going to wait here for Lettie Hempstock, and she's going to come back to me. And if I die here, then I will die waiting for her, and that's a better way to go than you and all you stupid horrible things tearing me to bits because I've got something inside me that I don't even want!" (Ocean at the End of the Lane) — Neil Gaiman

I was created a warrior, meant to guard the king of gods. For many years, I served him well, helping to keep him in power, protecting him even from his own family. But he did not think me strong enough to guard his most precious possession, a box formed from the bones of the dead goddess of oppression. No, he commanded a woman to do it. She was known as the greatest female warrior, true, but my pride was stung." Thankfully, Ashlyn remained relaxed. "Thinking to prove a mistake had been made, I helped release the demons inside upon the world. And in punishment, I was bonded to one. — Gena Showalter

It's the other things he does, the things that crush me on the inside, that make me want to die. I would have if not for Dutch's light. I would be dead. I know it. I wish it were real. I wish she were real. She's getting older and more beautiful with each passing day, and even though she's a figment of my fucked-up imagination, I love her. To the very depths of my soul. — Darynda Jones

So I let my shame own me, kill me, wilt me away into a thousand dead flakes, knowing if I kept it all in, she would never have to learn the dirtiness that was forever inside me
the bad, the ugly, the twisted. She could go on living her life happy, just like she deserved. — Jessica Sorensen

She doesn't even tell me it'll be okay when every single ounce of whatever was left inside my chest is propelled out of me the moment I realize that the very best part of me is dead. — Colleen Hoover

Luke's not a bad man, or even an unlikable one," she went on. "Just a man. You're all the same, great big hairy moths bashing yourselves to pieces after a silly flame behind a glass so clear your eyes don't see it. And if you do manage to blunder your way inside the glass to fly into the flame, you fall down burned and dead.
While all the time out there in the cool night there's food, and love, and baby moths to get. But do you see it, do you want it? No! It's back after the flame again, beating yourselves senseless until you burn yourselves dead! — Colleen McCullough

...And where's Margaret Pier? I know she's not dead, even if she's almost as old as I am and twice as stubborn."

"She said she'd never set foot inside this house again. Not after what you said the last time."

"Did I say something dreadful?"

"You said blind Republicanism like hers was an inherited social disease, like syphilis. You said it. I heard you myself. — Helen Hudson

Without boat or a light, what could he do to save Annie if she should, by whatever miracle it might be, answer him? And he damns himself, with a willingness that startles him, for turning the boat loose, for having taken no precaution to keep the matches dry. Taking the matches out of his pocket, he finds that the heads are either already gone, or they crumble as soon as he touches them to see if they are there. But he continues to take the dead sticks out of his pocket one at a time and to stand them upright inside the sweatband of his hat. It is though his mind, which like his body has begun to work apart from his will, is gambling that absurdity will be more bearable than reasonableness. — Wendell Berry

She wanted to leave the house and dance the world away until she fell down dead. For her, every passing minute meant more lost time. Inside the house, she was condemned to live a cloistered life, whereas outside those confining walls, the entire world was enjoying itself. It was like an eternal party... — Diamela Eltit

It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn't have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn't breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn't her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol' hands with scars on the fingers. Men's hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and- — Angele Gougeon

Rage had consumed her. She hadn't wanted to just murder him. She had wanted to empty her gun into his chest. And then she wanted to fill the holes with burning oil and dance in his still-warm blood. She had felt dead inside. — Karin Slaughter

You Don't Know What Love Is
But you know how to raise it in me
like a dead girl winched up from a river. How to
wash off the sludge, the stench of our past.
How to start clean. This love even sits up
and blinks; amazed, she takes a few shaky steps.
Any day now she'll try to eat solid food. She'll want
to get into the fast car, one low to the ground, and drive
to some cinderblock shithole in the desert
where she can drink and get sick and then
dance in nothing but her underwear. You know
where she's headed, you know she'll wake up
with an ache she can't locate and no money
and a terrible thirst. So to hell
with your warm hands sliding inside my shirt
and your tongue down my throat
like an oxygen tube. Cover me
in black plastic. Let the mourners through. — Kim Addonizio

What we had went so much deeper than a kiss. When we were together, she turned me completely inside out. It didn't matter if we were dead or alive. We could never be kept apart. There were some things more powerful than worlds or universes. She was my world, as much as I was hers. What we had, we knew. The poems are all wrong. It's a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper. And sometimes gold can stay. Anybody who's ever been in love can tell you that. — Kami Garcia

She'd taken ten years off his life, frightening him the way she had, and now he'd easily subtracted another ten by kissing her. If he spent much more time with Jenna Campbell, he'd be dead inside a week. — Debbie Macomber

I thought I knew you," she snapped. "I thought you were a good man, down deep"
Cett shook his head. "The good men are all dead, Allrianne. They died inside that city. — Brandon Sanderson

Hey! Back off from the dead girl. She's Resistance property." "Yeah," says his twin brother Dum from inside the cab. "We need her for autopsies and stuff. You think girls killed by demon princes are easy to find?" As — Susan Ee

It's as if I died too,' she whispered to herself, 'as if I was born dead.'
Ironically, it was true. Emotionally she knew what her mind did not, beyond logic, beyond reason, as if somehow deep inside she felt what Sarah knew. — Denny Taylor

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The coals seem to glow with such life, but she knew it was all an illusion.The embers were nothing but the last breath of death. I am like this fire, she thought.I look alive but inside I feel dead. — Cassandra Samuels

I grasp her cheeks, framing her face with my hands, and stare her straight in the eyes, dead serious, as I say, "If you're going to start crying, I need you to not do it while you're sitting on my lap."
She lets out a light laugh, grabbing my wrists, pulling my hands away from her face, forcing my arms around her.
"I'm not going to cry," she says, fumbling between us, undoing my pants. "I'm going to show you my appreciation instead."
"You don't have to give pussy to show gratitude," I tell her. "A simple 'thanks' will suffice."
"I know," she whispers. "Thank you. But I want to give you pussy to show you I'm grateful, because the way I feel when you're inside of me? There's nothing else like it. You make me feel alive. — J.M. Darhower

She looked back to see Sam standing there at the edge of the strip of sunlight inside Common Grounds, staring after her with an expression on his face like he'd lost his best- his only friend. — Rachel Caine

Empty promises can kill a good woman. She may still breathe, but inside her heart will be dead. I'm — Emily Minton

You can deny it. But I have been with you, in every way that matters. As you have been with me. We've shared our thoughts and our food, bound each other's wounds, slept close when the warmth of our bodies was all we had left to share. Your tears have fallen on my face, and my blood has been on your hands. You've carried me when I was dead, and I carried you when I did not even recognize you. You've breathed my breath for me, sheltered me inside your own body. So, yes, Fitz, in every way that matters, I've been with you. We've shared the stuff of our beings. Just as a captain does with her liveship. Just as a dragon does with his Elderling. We've been together in so many ways that we have mingled. So close have we been that when you made love to your Molly, she begat our child. Yours. Mine. Molly's. A little Buck girl with a wild streak of White in her. Oh, gods. Such — Robin Hobb

Then Rin was hugging him. Relief and joy swelled inside her till she thought she would burst.
"Uh ... ," Razo said, patting her head as if she might be crazy.
"You were dead," she mumbled against his chest.
"I was? Well, I wish someone had told me. Would've been nice to relax on my back for a while. Um, how'd I die? — Shannon Hale

Pointing into the ice, she said, "See that potted plant on the desk in there?" I saw. Nodded. "It's green now, preserved by the ice. But inside it's dead. And the moment that ice melts, it'll turn brown and wither into mush." She locked eyes with me. "I'm like that plant. — Ransom Riggs

*For eleven years, I've been worked over and abused in ways you can't imagine by things you don't want to know about. I've killed every kind of vile, black-souled, dead-eyed nightmare that ever made you piss your pjs and cry for mommy in the middle of the night. I kill monsters and, if I wanted, I could say a word and burn you to powder from the inside out. I can tear any human you ever met to rages with my bare hands. Give me one good reason why I could possibly need you?
*She looks straight at me, not blinking. No fear in her eyes.
*Because you might be the Tasmanian Devil and the Angel of Death all rolled into one, but you don't even know how to get a phone.
*I hate to admit it, but she has a point. — Richard Kadrey

Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character. — Gregory Maguire

But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand. — Philip K. Dick

Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all ... A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal ... A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness. — Megan Whalen Turner

There are so many things Blair doesn't get about me, so many things she ultimately overlooked, and things that she would never know, and there would always be a distance between us because there were too many shadows everywhere. Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away - I now want to explain all these things to her but I know I never will, the most important one being: I never liked anyone and I'm afraid of people. — Bret Easton Ellis

Do I think she has forgotten me; found a new life? Assumed that I was dead, accepted that I was dead. Alexander shrugged. I think about it all the time. I live inside my heart. But what can I do? I have to move toward her. — Paullina Simons

SHE RESEARCHED WHEN everyone slept. In the dead silence, her mind worked with more clarity. No interruptions, no worries. Sometimes she even imagined that her ancestors guided her. That they reached out from the past to share their stories.
"Hocus Pocus!" she thought, smiling. Her inside joke was a source of inspiration.
But her imagination was not far-fetched.
My second cousin, twice removed, is a family historian. She is also a lawyer. And this is why I chose her. I needed her to do me a favor. I chose her, although she is a business lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. That was fine by me. It's not like my lawyers did a superb job at defending me. I was wrongfully executed. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

She wanted to explain everything to him - how certain notes of the Moonlight Sonata shredded her heart like wind inside a paper bag; how her soul felt as endless and deep as the sea churning on their left; how the sight of the young Muslim couple filled her with an emotion that was equal parts joy and sadness; and above all, how she wanted a marriage that was different from the dead sea of marriages she saw all around her, how she wanted something finer, deeper, a marriage made out of silk and velvet instead of coarse cloth, a marriage made of clouds and stardust and red earth and ocean foam and moonlight and sonatas and books and art galleries and passion and kindness and sorrow and ecstasy and of fingers touching from under a burqua. — Thrity Umrigar

You can't know that." "But I do," she said. "I can feel it. Goddamn it, you think you're the only one with a voice inside? Samantha Aldovar is in there, and she is out of time. If we back off, they kill her and eat her. And if we take the time to go through channels and go in with SRT and all that, she disappears and she's dead. I know it. She's in there now, Dex. I got such a strong feeling; I've never been more sure about something." It — Jeff Lindsay

I suggested that the system put all the potential offending [sexually abusive] alters in an internal prison. Jennifer said that would take too long. An alter popped out and said, "Just a minute," and then, after a brief silence, announced that they had "killed" all the offender alters; they were lying in the inside world dead, covered in blood! I was not very happy with such drastic measures, but accepted it for the interim, knowing I could rely on Jennifer to tell me if the risk recurred. I made a list of the "dead" alters.
The next morning Jennifer called; she had dreamed about sexually abusing a child. I asked her to look for more related memories before we met in the evening. She had to "reincarnate" all the dead alters to find the memories. (We already had a method for doing this, as some alters had previously experienced internal "death" in "disasters" in the inner world; when they were made new internal bodies, they became alive again.) — Alison Miller

dJack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack forgot to check if the ice was thick.
Emma was still,
Emma was late,
Emma's brother is now part of the lake.
Time has passed,
Time has gone,
Time brought Jack back wrong.
He was solemn,
He was brave,
He left his coat on Emma's grave.
Emma was sad,
Emma was scared,
But she knew inside that Jack really cared.
Jack was lost,
Jack had forgot,
That he had a story before the plot.
Jack had wondered,
Jack had fought,
Jack had remembered what he had forgot.
I hope you dream.
I hope you wonder.
I hope you have fun because this is done.
Keep believing everyone.
Jack be fearless,
Jack be bold,
Jack drowned when he was 17 years old. — William Joyce

And there was somewhere inside me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure - something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate - and I am only twenty - and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written on her stern: Judea, London. Do or Die. O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting around the world a lot of coal for a freight - to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. — Joseph Conrad

... and Lynn is dead inside, like a corpse. She Instagrams methodically, clinically, as if she's gathering evidence for defense, like her entire life is dedicated to proving that she has a life. — Caroline Kepnes

She didn't know that I was dead inside, that I had ruled out the chance of joy ever again. Of that night and every other night to follow. I had fully settled into my unhappiness and wore it comfortably. So comfortably in fact, that it was barely perceptible to others. It just fitted me so well. My suit of misery hung happily on me. So happily that she assumed I could have "a lovely night" in it. The loveliness she referred to was so extremely far out of reach for me. It as far as ... the bloody moon. — Dawn French

There were two ways to get through something like this, she finally realized. Being utterly dead inside and completely cold-blooded. Or being 100 percent obsessed with living. — B.G. Harlen

I almost said, you're not broken, you're just going through something. But i couldn't. She knew. There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a dead spot in the middle. I was supposed to breathe life into that dead spot, but it hadn't worked ... — Janet Fitch

It's hard to see. There are only the shadows of things. She feels along the fridge to the wall and the phone, touching first her uncle's keys, then her dead aunt's, a woman Devon can feel judging her from the grave even though she's only borrowing something, not stealing it. She has never stolen anything in her life, and she never will. She steps into the cool, still air of the closed garage and she sees Sick's face. The way he looked at her as she let him in, the only one. His hair hung down and his lips were parted and as he moved inside her his eyes seemed to shine with a sweet sadness, the kind that only comes when you know something good can never, ever last. But you keep going anyway. All you can do is keep going and never quit. — Andre Dubus III

Stella says when we were kids and things got bad she would go outside herself. She said she would be in a spot near the ceiling in the corner of the room. Watching. Like everything was happening to somebody else. Like you watch a movie on a screen.
Not me. I tuck in. I go into an even deeper place in myself. And I pull the covers in over me. And then I dare you to find me. You have to find me to touch me or hurt me. At least, the part of me that really counts. I go inside and just hold very still. And part of me feels dead. Like it doesn't matter. Whatever it is. It just doesn't matter. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Alex pushed open the door to Sewell Hall and rushed inside, breathing heavily and wishing she hadn't worn her corset stays quite so tight this morning. "Vanity be damned," she huffed to herself. "Loveliness will do me no good with Blackmoor if I drop dead from lack of air before he sees me. — Sarah MacLean

Her eyes weren't blinking. There was still something almost dead in them, something very far away. She seemed to be seeing all the way through to the back of him and beyond, out into the cold space of the future in which they would both soon be dead, out into the nothingness that Lalitha and his mother and his father had already passed into, and yet she was looking straight into his eyes, and he could feel her getting warmer by the minute. And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. — Jonathan Franzen

Once again your mind explodes with a searing pain. A floodgate of memories bursts wide. Yet it is her face that keeps haunting you. Always her face. Who is she? Then things begin to crystallize. You remember your funeral. Begging and pleading for someone to release you from the darkness. You're not dead. You can't be. Then you feel her presence. Warm, caring, soothing. But somewhere deep inside she feels empty now. She has no reason. No meaning. No soul. But your soul lives. While her's is dying. — Todd McFarlane