Elizabeth Wurtzel Quotes

When I get the strength to leave, you always tell me that you need me. And I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love you. So I stop and think that maybe you could learn to appreciate me, and it all remains the same that you ain't never gonna change.

Attachment is not love. Where there is attachment there is exploitation.

A psychiatrist does not want you to wake up. He tells you to dream some more, to find the pond and pour more tears into it. And really, he's just another bird drinking from your misery.

I wanted her to to go on talking and understand without me saying anything. I wanted her to love me enough to leave him, to pack us up and take us away from him, to kill him if need be. (107)

My appetite for self-destruction and misery is greatly diminished. I'm not interested in being unhappy.

I'm not a proponent of staying together and being miserable and damaged and coming through actually a more battered person.

There have been a couple specific instances where I've felt like I couldn't survive without interacting with a certain person. I've been involved with some pretty manipulative people who have told me the same thought: that I can't live without them.

If you are in a toxic relationship, that poisons you everywhere else in your life.

Rich always wanted to be so close that it freaked me out. I always thought it was weak of him that he liked me so much, but then I realized that he was strong to put up with me and stay with me when I kept trying to push him away.

Bullying made me feel insecure, alone, ugly, powerless, and hopeless at times.

I wasn't present for my own life for a long time. I wasn't there; I wasn't in my relationships; I wasn't in my band; I wasn't in my soul - I was disconnected from all of it. I would let myself live in a miserable situation forever, mostly of my own making. I made my own misery and made the people around me miserable.

There is no cure for narcissistic personality disorder. If you have a relationship with someone who has it, there will be a certain level of pain built into it. I don't think you can have a close, loving relationship with a narcissist, and I don't think it's possible to be a true narcissist and be a good mother.

When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.

Women are much stronger than men. When a woman says enough is enough, which means enough is enough. Man will always lie at her feet in the hope of return. I was lying. And somehow happy.

There was a time when I was unable to get out of bed because my body, its muscles eating themselves away, refused to sit up. There was a time when the lies rolled off my tongue with ease, when it was far more important to me to self-destruct than to admit I had a problem, let alone allow anyone to help.

It was my Fat Elvis period. I was eating and drinking like a pig. I was depressed and I was crying out for help. It's real. And I meant it.

A bad relationship can do that, can make you doubt everything good you ever felt about yourself.

I managed to reach a depth of self-loathing that usually takes a night of drinking to achieve.

That's how disagreements always ended with Hugh Hefner; he would just stomp off, and you were left to pick the pieces of your self-worth up off the floor. I'd invested every part of myself in the mansion and had nothing waiting for me outside those gates. I felt so trapped and so vulnerable to his criticisms.

I'll burn myself, or I'll cut myself. For a burn or a cut might be shown, might be nursed, might scar or heal, would be a miserable kind of emblem; would anyway be there, on the surface of her body, rather than corroding it from within. Now the thought came to her again, that she might scar herself in some way. It came, like the solution to a problem: I won't be doing it like some hysterical girl. I won't be hoping she'll come catch me at it. It won't be like lying on the sitting-room floor. I'll be doing it for myself, as a secret.

Even the wealthiest professional woman can be "brought down" by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and is consistently lied to. To the degree that she trusts her male companion, lying and other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem.

For years my life alternated between depression and acute anxiety. One night I woke up in a state of dread and intense fear, more intense than I had ever experienced before. Life seemed meaningless, barren, hostile. It became so unbearable that suddenly the thought came into my mind, I cannot live with myself any longer.

So I put up with bad behavior in the name of loving the way I thought you were supposed to love.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why -- I don't know.