Wally Lamb Quotes

I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.

I have reason to be shy. I've been hurt plenty.

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

Emmy, the events we lived through taught me to be sure of nothing about other people. They taught me to expect danger around every corner. They taught me to understand that there are people in this world that mean you harm, And sometimes, they're the people who say they love you.

In the past I was very open and very generous, and I found that it just exploded in my face. A lot of people weren't there for me when I needed them. So I have become a little shell shocked. Subsequently almost paranoid and frightened of people now. Maybe I'm losing out in meeting some marvelous people, but I am doing the only thing I can to save my spirit.

I'm not looking at anything now. I'll look at it at the time. What I have seen, what I've seen is so bad.

That was another lesson I had learned perhaps too well: people meant pain.

jealousy is conceived only in insecurity and must be nourished in fear.

All I can do is stand still- I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right.

Life, for Colin, was one long brace against pain and disappointment, and everybody apart from his wife was an enemy until proven otherwise.

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

Something snapped inside her. “Of course I’m afraid! Relationships do bad things to me.” He started to respond, but the pain had gone on long enough, and she didn’t want to hear it. “You know what I want? I want peace. I want a good job and a decent place to live. I want to read books and listen to music and have time to make some female friendships that are going to last. When I wake up in the morning, I want to know that I have a decent shot at being happy. And here’s what’s really sad. Until I met you, I was almost there.

It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

Bruises fade father, but the pain remains the same. And I still remember how you kept me so afraid.

It was Adam, but he was too late. He couldn’t love me anymore. He would be so angry with me. I had to hide. He didn’t love me so he might hurt me when he was angry. When he calmed down, that would hurt him. I didn’t want him hurting because of me. There was nowhere for a person to hide. So I wouldn’t be a person. My eyes fell on the shelves that lined the far back corner. A coyote could hide there.

Maybe that's how I learned to handle my deep hurt - by forgetting.

Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly - hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.

Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.

I've suffered betrayal with all five senses. For over a year.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

Jealousy is the fear of losing the thing you love most. It's very normal. Suspicion is the thing that's abnormal.

no one had experiences any more, only traumas.

Most human beings still cannot trust love.

Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother. Doubt is a foundling unhappy and astray, and though his own mother who gave him birth should find him and enfold him, he would withdraw in caution and in fear.