Daniel Handler Quotes

I knew from a very young age that there was something very wrong with me.

Nothing else loves me, or ever will. Not even - especially - me. I know what I am and that is not a thing to love.

I suffered from self hatred so much. It's like I didn't want to look like that any more. I didn't to feel like that any more. It had to be another way.

Of all afflictions, the worst is self-contempt.

It's really hard to watch yourself.

I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

Once, in a dry season, I wrote in large letters across two pages of a notebook that innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. Although now, some years later, I marvel that a mind on the outs with itself should have nonetheless made painstaking record of its every tremor, I recall with embarrassing clarity the flavor of those particular ashes. It was a matter of misplaced self-respect.

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.

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

Sometimes it is painful to be oneself; at other times it seems impossible to escape oneself.

The time will come when you will hate the sight of a mirror.

I am not loved. I am not a beautiful soul. I am not a good-natured, giving person. I am not anybody's savior.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

When you're in that scene, you really wonder if this is all you're ever going to be. You know how vile and filthy you are inside.

It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.

It's tough being me.

No matter how I look, the freak inside me leaks out.

Who you are vs. who you wish you were: Who wins?

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong. I don't know how to explain it more. It's universal. Some people are better at dealing with it, and they sleep with no pain - not pain, arguments. I've grown quite comfortable with being at war.

I can't look at the mirror beyond two minutes. I don't know what to look at. What is the point of looking at yourself? You can't change your face.

I've spent my entire life trying to figure out why I was different than everybody else. Why is my voice so deep? Why am I so muscular?

It's such a horrible feeling to not be honest to who you are.

Gymnastics was my worth - it was my life - and I hated myself.

I would go to work on the show and I felt awful every day, that's not the way it was. ... I felt like some kind of prostitute or something. If I feel so bad, why keep on showing up to this place? I'm going to Africa. The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching.

…I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me.