Daniel Keyes Quotes

It wasn't right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you couldn't stop until something stopped you.

To have guilt you've got to earn guilt, but sometimes when you earn it, you don't feel the guilt you ought to have. And that's what The Firebombing is about.

Then I proceeded to Williamsburg, where I found all well. I went to the capitol where I sent for the wench to clean my room and when I came I kissed her and felt her, for which God forgive me.... About 10 o’clock I went to my lodgings. I had good health but wicked thoughts, God forgive me.

I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn't feel wrong, I didn't feel right!

I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.

I felt for my crime a just terror; I looked on my life with hate, and my passion with horror.

Then no rightful cause was left, and the pain of anger was turning into the shameful pain of submission. He had no right to condemn anyone - he thought - to denounce anything, to fight and die joyously, claiming the sanctity of virtue. The broken promises, the unconfessed desires, the betrayal, the deceit, the lies, the fraud - he was guilty of them all. What form of corruption could he scorn? Degrees do not matter, he thought; one does not bargain about inches of evil.

Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.

I could not stop something I knew was wrong and terrible. I had an awful sense of powerlessness.

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

Guilt is a supreme waste of time and energy.

I feel bad that I don't feel worse.

I don't think I will ever be able to forgive myself for what I have done.

I felt that I ostracized myself by my behavior, by the past, by living with all the regrets of my mistakes, that I sort of wore a hair shirt and beat myself up most of the day thinking and regretting why did I make such a mistake? Why have I made so many mistakes?

I have a natural instinct to feel guilty and that I've let people down. I've apologized in more songs than 'Back to the Shack.' Going back to our second record, the closing lines are 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' It's definitely part of my personality.

Your people invented guilt, but my people perfected it.

Some of the things I've done in my life I'm ashamed of.

I was forced to lie to my father by doctors and relatives. I made that choice and agreed with them, and I will never, ever get over it. If I hear a lie in my life with my children, with my wife, my work, my audiences, I want to annihilate myself, vaporize myself, and wipe myself off the face of the earth.

Guilt is a serious appetite killer.

I live in a puddle of guilt, an ocean of guilt that you want your own time.

Denial, panic, threats, anger - those are very human responses to feeling guilt.

I'm a bad person.

Man, wretched man, whene'er he stoops to sin, Feels, with the act, a strong remorse within.

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened.

There is no wretchedness like self-reproach.