Veronica Roth Quotes

He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way. "Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die--and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively.

She asked him to come and see her that night. He agreed, in order to get away, knowing that he was incapable of going. But that night, in his burning bed, he understood that he had to go see her, even if he were not capable. He got dressed by feel, listening in the dark to his brother's calm breathing, the dry cough of his father in the next room, the asthma of the hens in the courtyard, the buzz of the mosquitoes, the beating of his heart, and the inordinate bustle of a world that he had not noticed until then, and he went out in the sleeping street.

Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?

When I was in that danger...I felt like I was shaken awake...after everything she made me feel...I made a decision and went to sleep. Do you know what that's like - trying to go to sleep, and lose yourself in the hopes of burying the worst fears in your life?...I wasn't in love with the past. I was terrified of my own future.

Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn't needed the transportation.

My heart raced. He needs you, I thought. Don't let him down. I couldn't remember ever being so happy... or so scared.

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do--out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation--look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

It's hard to distinguish when I was actually struggling from when I only felt like I was struggling - which was pretty much always.

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.

I didn't know what was going through my mind.

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

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

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

Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

All of my close friends are emotional train wrecks. This is what makes our lives interesting - constantly doubting ourselves, worrying, wondering if we've made a mistake. Could we have done better? Are we good people? Are we bad people?

I feel confidence in myself, but at the same time there's these cracks in the facade and those little things underneath that are unstable.

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

I feel like I'm in my own head a lot; it just feels amazing, but scary, weird and confusing.

I suffer from anxiety, moments of depression. I'm in my head so much, and I'm thinking so much, I'm playing a tug-of-war within my mind.

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them