But until that happens -- and however brief a life, it will take a while -- there is a terrible, hateful interlude that belongs to us alone, and during which we have no alternative but to cope with what we have done or omitted to do and to distract or placate our feelings of guilt, and sometimes the only way of achieving this is to increase that guilt, to heap up new guilt to cover the old, to overshadow or blur or minimize it, until finally all guilt has passed and there isn't a soul in the world who can remember what we did, no quick, wicked tongue to talk about it, not even a tremulous finger to point us out as having been the cause of anything. Anonymous
If only it were possible to love without injury — fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person...
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Graham Greene
She looks at the swings, and I can see she’s imagining what they’d look like if the kids weren’t there. The guilt of this holds her down momentarily. It appears to be there constantly. Never far away, despite her love for them. I realize that...
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Markus Zusak
But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.
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Banana Yoshimoto
It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.
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Chuck Palahniuk
He didn’t deserve compassion. Sympathy. Not even understanding. He deserved worse, far worse than he had ever been given.
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V.S. Carnes
