Wendelin Van Draanen Quotes

Sometimes I wish I was less of a maniac; sometimes I wish I was more.

No confict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself.

Having failed to conquer myself, my best hope now is to arrange an alliance with myself.

It seemed to Alabama that, reaching her goal, she would drive the devils that had driven her - that, in proving herself, she would achieve that peace which she imagined went only in surety of one’s self - that she would be able, through the medium of the dance, to command her emotions, to summon love or pity or happiness at will, having provided a channel through which they might flow. She drove herself mercilessly, and the summer dragged on.

I have never yet figured out what to do about good advice that you get, and that you know right away would help you, but that you cannot follow.

Is the human condition not defined by an endless struggle to control the ego's subterfuges?

Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be struggle in your life. You have to grow in experience to control your ego. Cause, you know, an ego can be crushed, it can be killed, it can be smashed, but it comes back. It never dies. That's the thing about the ego: it never dies.

The journey over the bridge had unnerved me. The river water passed me by like an untouched drink. I suspected that even if my mother and brother had not been there I would have made no move to jump.

The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

Sometimes for me not throwing a tantrum is what running a marathon or swimming the English Channel must be like for others of a less-challenging emotional nature.

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

Resolution is struggle. Resolution is ego. Resolution is saying, "I cannot live spontaneously. ".

For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream.

[I am not] the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worst part of oneself.

They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.

That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman.

He can hardly be a true friend to another, who is an enemy to himself.

I am my own heaven and hell!

I can't think of a greater single vehicle to goodness and a better world than if everyone battled their own natures

Jack, get a grip of yourself.' I have a grip of myself.' Jack took a grip of himself. It was a most intimate grip; not the kind of grip that you usually take of yourself in public.

Oh, man, oh how I wish I didn't smoke or drink to reason with my head.

Then I fall asleep with a stupid feeling of wishing to be different from what I am or from what I want to be; perhaps to behave differently from the way I want to behave or do behave.

We're fighting internal struggles, I am the cancer for my own cure.