Garth Stein Quotes

Everyone has monsters and demons within themselves. They're metaphors for the human condition.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate; but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.

Everyone fears and courts his own demon.

There's also a part of me that's self-destructive, and another part that's a hero who's going to stand up for a principle.

The enemy is within, and within stays within, and we can't get out of within.

God defend me from myself.

She nourishes the poison in her veins and is consumed by a secret fire.

It's not like you make a decision and everything inside you is 100 percent happy.

My demons and I are not compatible. We never have been and never will be.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.

My demons are not that easy to shake.

Everyone is battling something emotional behind closed doors - that's life.

I was never more alive than when the Dark Passenger was driving.

I have never met a man who has given me as much trouble as myself.

Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

Everyone thinks I'm crazy, you know, because I can't tell them the truth; which is, that I'm driven crazy by all these thoughts, all these heads.

Ten thousand million nightmares, temptation by the score, I used to get so high, and still I wanted more. You think my time is wasted in search of who I am, I tried so hard to kill the boy inside the man.

There is another man within me that's angry with me.

You cannot escape what you have to deal with inside yourself. It will never bring good things. It will only bring madness.

You know what the really scary thing about bad dreams? It's that something's going on in your head, and you can't control it. I mean, It's like there's these bad worlds inside you. But it's just you... it's like you're betraying yourself.

Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. It was love lashed by its own self that spoke. It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust. It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.

All the trials we endure cannot be compared to these interior battles.