Christina Baker Kline Quotes

“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don't know.” “Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

I'm putting up a great front, then because I feel like I'm breaking apart inside.

I've been in pain hope it doesn't show I've been insane well the time is slow

I am half a man, holy Jesus, what a drag.

She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.

It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred.

I think emotional and mental pain is probably worse than physical pain. I think we don't realize that I have no arms or legs but we all have disabilities of some sort, some fear, some lost, some wishes that didn't come true, things we wish would be better.

Yesterday I wanted to turn inside out.

I find I have to be the sad clown: laughing on the outside, crying on the inside.

He was outwardly calm but inwardly bleeding to death.

Why must I feel like that? Why must I chase the cat?

I felt like I was literally losing myself as being the joyful, spiritual, passionate, exciting woman that I naturally had been.

Now and then I see something in her eyes, and I wonder if I’ve ever grasped how much pain she’s really in.

My heart is heavy, she thought. It’s not just a saying. It is what is—heavy, a great stone lodged in my breast, pressing down my whole being. How can I even stand straight and look out upon the world? I am doubled over into myself and, for all the weight, find only emptiness.

I had my eyes closed in the dark, I sighed a million sighs, I told a million lies, to myself, to myself.

I am...sad and angry. Why is my spirit so sad and angry? I look back at my life and all I can remember is rage and rage and rage.

All my life I've been dogged by guilt because I feel there is this difference between the way I look and the way I feel inside.

All through the night, she battled herself. Or battled to know herself. She fell apart and then put herself back together and then she fell apart again and put herself back together, over and over.

I open a paperclip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this. A whimper, a peep? I draw little window cracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting.

But to appear happy when I am so miserable — Oh! who can require it?

Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.

Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.