Hubert Selby Jr. Quotes

We only know how to lose and be lost.

I just look around and say, I'm a mess. I don't know why I do things.

Sometimes I feel I don't know even know how to run.

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

It sometimes feels like I'm not doing anything.

Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

The Cardinal is at his wit's end - it is true that he had not far to go.

No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing.

We can't win at home. We can't win on the road. As general manager, I just can't figure out where else to play.

I'm beyond the point of thinking I'm powerful enough to solve my own problems.

A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing.

Sometimes I want to control things more than I'm able to.

After being on the field for so long and feeling like you have some control over the outcome or what's happening out there, now I'm upstairs, and I have no control over anything. I'm working through that.

I've lost a lot of control in my life.

When you're 13 or 14, sometimes you wake up in a bad place. You feel like everything's out of your control. You don't know what to do.

Sometimes, what's helpful is to admit that we are discouraged and admit that we are at a loss.

When things aren't going well it can feel like the world is against you and there's nowhere to turn.

It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.

The truest comparison we can make of love is to liken it to a fever; we have no more power over the one than the other, either as to its violence or duration.

I don't know anything!' Tim(Caleb) wailed. He'd never spoken a truer word in his life.

I know nothing and my heart aches

Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself.

At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.