Mary Szybist Quotes

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.

I'm so glad I spent 10 years being sad and lonely.

Every faculty and virtue I possess can be used as an instrument with which to worry myself.

The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight.

As a boy and even now, I am wont to melancholy. I do, probably once a day, experience a sincere heartbreak.

In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.

I can see myself before myself - a being through dark scenery.

It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old.

When I woke the next morning in my room at White's Motel, I showered and stood naked in front of the mirror, watching myself solemnly brush my teeth. I tried to feel something like excitement but came up only with a morose unease. Every now and then I could see myself-truly see myself-and a sentence would come to me, thundering like a god into my head, and as I saw myself then in front of that tarnished mirror what came was 'the woman with the hole in her heart'. That was me.

I didnt like being reminded about how self-absorbed i was. I wanted to be over this, done with this. I didnt want to live in a broken world or a broken me. I wasnt trying to weasel out of anything. I just wasnt in the mood of being on the earth that night. I get like that sometimes when it rains, or when i see certain sad movies.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

How hard could it be? Is it really going to hurt? You get into that deep well of emotion if you are by yourself. Why am I here? What's the point of going on? If I can't do what I want to do, then what's the point?

One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that.

Existential philosophy, poetry and art - just like sadness - were all unavoidable to a tender young man in the meat works.

If I'm not doing something or working on something, I literally just sit in the room and think, which I don't think is productive. I won't go outside for days.

Living, it's awful for me.

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

People tell me they idolise me, want to be like me, but I tell them, 'trust me, you don't want my life.' I've been a very tortured soul.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself.

When everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself.

I have my moments. Ever since I was a boy, I never was someone who was at ease with happiness. Too often I embrace introspection and self-doubt. I wish I could embrace the good things.