Janet Fitch Quotes

They can't hurt me. I'm not like the rest of you. There's no one left I love.

Millions of people have decided not to be sensitive. They have grown thick skins around themselves just to avoid being hurt by anybody. But it is at great cost. Nobody can hurt them, but nobody can make them happy either.

To deaden yourself against any hurt is to deaden yourself also against the hurt of others.

I started to build barriers between myself and others to protect myself.

A woman could be having fun A woman could be like a nun In order to survive We cannot be kind Until we are hurt

I made a vow that I would never need another person ever. Turned my heart into a cage, a victim of a kind of rage.

Among the reasons people keep sad stories to themselves is that they do not want anyone to feel sorry for them. I don't. I don't want you to feel sorry for me.

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more.

After I lost my fiance, it seemed like it would be better to always be alone than to risk being hurt again.

I spent much of my life hiding.

I'm learning to deal with my loneliness because then nobody can muck me around any more.

There are people that have closed themselves off so much because they've been hurt so much in their lives.

If we didn't desensitize ourselves in some way, every day would feel like its own tragedy.

I don't know how to be hurt.

Do I have a cold heart? Some say.

No. Take the heart first. Then you don't feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there's no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It's the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It's the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It's the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days.

The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you're standing outside. You'll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you've been out there for awhile, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you're getting colder and colder, as the body heat you brought outside with you seeps out of your skin. Instead of getting used to it, you get weaker the longer you endure it.

I've been hurt so many times I don't have the balls for it anymore.

Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart. The more you expect from people's response to your experience of abandonment, the more you will feel exposed to ridicule.

Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' -The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.

It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.

And a rock feels no pain; And an island never cries.

When you lock everything down tight so that the pain can't get out, you also keep good stuff from getting in.

All my life, to this day, the memory of my childhood remains grim and incoherent. If I close my eyes and think back, I see little except violence and fear. In those early years, I somehow came to understand I would have to draw from within myself whatever emotional resources I needed to go wherever I was headed. As a result, for years, I became a boy who lived almost totally within himself.