Alain de Botton Quotes

When all your stuff gets smashed, everybody gives you new stuff. And when you've been playing the same guitar since you were like 12, that's a lot like dancing with somebody else's wife.

Once you lose somebody so close to you, you become very overprotective.

It was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.

One person's trauma is another's loss of innocence.

Do I look like I have anything ?" I asked him, in a reasonable voice. He looked as unnerved as the nurse had. He said, "Sorry," and backed away. I took a step after him. I screamed, "I HAVE NOTHING!" And then I said, in a perfectly calm voice, "See, I never had anything to start with.

Besides the obvious difference, there was not much distinction between losing a best friend and losing a lover: it was all about intimacy. One moment, you had someone to share your biggest triumphs and fatal flaws with; the next minute, you had to keep them bottled inside. One moment, you'd start to call her to tell her a snippet of news or to vent about your awful day before realizing you did not have that right anymore; the next, you could not remember the digits of her phone number.

Anger is nothing more than an outward expression of hurt, fear and frustration

[T]hese last few days where I've moped around damn near depressed for real, because of people who do not exist. Not really. I can buy them Christmas presents, but there is no way to send them. Sometimes I feel like I should be able to walk into the next room and there they will be, but they won't. These people do not exisit as flesh and blood, but there are different kinds of reality, and there are days when imagination feels very, very real.

I had heard that when people lost people, there was anger. But I definitely experienced it a lot more than I was prepared for it. Anger was not something I'd ever really felt in my life and I was not prepared for it.

In the scheme of life, in emotion and loss, I responded the way I did. I lost. I shouldn't have responded that way. I've had some people tell me that I did a great thing - sticking up for myself - but to me, personally, with the way that I handled my emotions, I lost. But I learned. That will not happen again.

People run away, pull their hair, go off in different directions, nodding their heads and going, "Oh, God." I am slightly disheveled, I think. I'm really pleased that I am, because otherwise I could be in a really, really dull and boring place now, as a musician, at least.

It's a skill that I worked all my life, and it's been taken away. That's kind of tough to take.

Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation.

What good can come from meeting death with tears? If a man Is sorry for himself, he doubles death.

You ever want to feel powerless? Watch the people you care about being hurt and know there is nothing you can do about it.

I haven't had a very good day. I think I might still be hung over and everyone's dead and my root beer's gone.

that since Cecilia’s suicide, the Lisbon’s could hardly wait for the night to forget themselves in sleep

The first morning after Westley's departure, Buttercup thought she was entitled to do nothing more than sit around moping and feeling sorry for herself. After all, the love of her life had fled, life had no meaning, how could you face the future, et cetera, et cetera.

You know she's going to leave my broken heart behind her...

Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.

I wasn't crying about mothers," he said rather indignantly. "I was crying because I can't get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn't crying.

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

We have to divide mother love with our brothers and sisters. Our parents can help us cope with the loss of our dream of absolute love. But they cannot make us believe that we haven't lost it.

Alex took a piece of my heart with him when he left.

I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.