Lisa Kleypas Quotes

We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to others’ pain and loss.

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

If someone has gone through a lot of emotional pain, including the loss of loved ones, that person may try to build a shell around his or her feelings to protect him- or herself from the pain.

There are stories that are true, in which each individual's tale is unique and tragic, and the worst of the tragedy is that we have heard it before, and we cannot allow ourselves to feel it to deeply. We build a shell around it like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function, day in, day out, immune to others' pain and loss. If it were to touch us it would cripple us or make saints of us; but, for the most part, it does not touch us. We cannot allow it to.

I think for Beecher specifically, Keller was with him when his wife died. Beecher had decided after he first got into prison that he had to shut off everybody. You can't let anybody in and you have to become like them and you have to be threatening and all that.

I saw the dead without really seeing them.

When you're on the battlefield, you switch off your soul; otherwise, you would die of terror - you would die of fear. You switch off your soul, and you act like an animal or a machine.

Blessed be shock. Blessed be the part of us that protects us from too much pain and sorrow. At the heart of life is a fusebox.

Funny how when your life is mostly bullshit, you turn off feeling. Sometimes it's hard to turn it back on again.

The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.

He felt strangely numb. As though from a great distance, he was aware that he was being beaten. The last sensations of pain left him. He no longer felt anything, though very faintly he could hear the impact of the club upon his body. But it was no longer his body, it seemed so far away.

Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterwards she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly.

Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter.

I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me . . . no one can do that.

I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us.

Back on shore everyone was pretty messed up, but the owner/captain was by far the worst off. He ended up drunk for a week, though the only thing he ever said was "So?" The boat's gone. "So?" Your mate's dead. "So?" Hey at least you're alive. "So?" An awful word but it does harden you. It hardened me.

When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really truly gone?

The burial of feelings has begun.

i have come to terms with my life, and that is my affair - i am not cold, i swear, but i have decided certain things, it is best for me to ignore emotion; i have not been happy dealing with it.

I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me.

In small letters, someone has written NEVER FORGET on one of the slats. I know it's supposed to be a pledge, but it feels like a curse. Don't we have to forget some of it? Don't we have to forget this feeling? If we don't, how will we live?

Eventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there's nothing to be done about them.

This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity.

I began to draw an invisible boundary between myself and other people. No matter who I was dealing with. I maintained a set distance, carefully monitoring the person’s attitude so that they wouldn’t get any closer. I didn’t easily swallow what other people told me. My only passions were books and music