Matt de la Pena Quotes

There was a sentence in your letter that struck me, “I wish I were far away from everything, I am the cause of all, and bring only sorrow to everybody, I alone have brought all this misery on myself and others.” These words struck me because that same feeling, just the same, not more nor less, is also on my conscience.

Well, I would have much preferred to have had a normal childhood. I would have loved it if my greatest dilemma, at 14, was whether to go to Benetton for my pullovers. I would have preferred not to have cried all the tears I have cried.

I thought I was a good kid.

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

I think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

Feeling no remorse must be a blessing when all you have are your memories

In childhood we all have ... a far higher sensibility for April and April evenings - a heartache for them, which in riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled.

Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.

I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

I never had innocence.

The child's laughter is pure until he first laughs at a clown.

I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known.

Childhood candor... shall I ever find you again?

For I see that then I was still all in a state of innocence, but that innocence, once lost, is lost forever.

If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors.

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.

O little souls! as pure as white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years, How red my setting sun appears, How lurid looks this soul of mine!

I want to make things that put me in the position of innocence, that recreate the feeling of innocence in you.

I can’t imagine it now, but I must’ve been innocent at some time in my life. A baby don’t just get itself born bad, do it?

Okay I'll be honest girl I can't lie I miss you.

And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

You can run away from home But you can't run away from your pain I sit here alone There's always someone else to blame.

I dream that I have found us both again, With spring so many strangers' lives away, And we, so free, Out walking by the sea, With someone else's paper words to say.... They took us at the gates of green return, Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why- Do children meet again? Does any trace remain, Along the superhighways of July?

We don't look at each other anymore. Not really. Not since I pulled him from that opium den. Now when I look at him, I see the addict. And when he looks at me, he sees what he would rather not remember. I wish I could be his adored little girl again, sitting at his side.