S. C. Gwynne Quotes

When I walked out of the seminary, I was 31, but I was like a scared, frightened kid. I had no place to live, no license, no clothes. I was just a lost soul.

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

On my travels I, at least, did not see Serbia as a land of paranoiacs - much more as the huge room of an orphaned, yes, an orphaned, abandoned child.

Fear is ubiquitous in human life. It starts in infancy with our primal state of helplessness, where we can see what's going on but we can't move to get it. As we grow older we become a little more able to get what we want but then we're going to die so that gives fear another boost.

I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.

Nakata's empty inside... Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most

The stuff I write about is pretty universal, the things my closest friends and I talk about - our anxiety about being here on this scary planet, during these scary times, as vulnerable as kittens, having lost so many people I couldn't live without.

You aren't going to leave me alone are you?

I never trusted anybody at all. I don't know why it was so hard, I just didn't.

I have lived so long among people who do not understand me, been so long accustomed to refrain and disguise myself for fear of being laughed at, that I have grown as difficult to come at as a snail in a shell; and what is worse, I cannot come out of my shell when I wish it.

People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.

I have always been very obsessed with time. Time's passage makes us all very vulnerable and because we all experience it in our own way, it can make us feel very alone.

Being alone on the moors is scary; as the rain clouds settle in, it makes you realise your place in nature.

Shuddering under the autumn stars, each year, the head sinks lower and lower.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed.

I felt vulnerable and very much between friends. I remember walking down the hallway and thinking I had no way of knowing what was coming, literally. This wasn't because I had some horrific bullying story, but because of a steady drip of negativity.

Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes.

My father died when I was seven. I guess I am interested in fatherlessness as a metaphor for vulnerability and unprotectedness. Being on your own in the world in a way you're not quite ready for, ever.

I had no friends. I worried a lot.

Fear is a huge thing for older people.

Victims always feel alone and helpless.

I have no history but the length of my bones.

My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain.

I never feel more alone than when I'm traveling. Alone and, to some extent, helpless. The world expects a certain level of competence and can be merciless when this expectation is unmet.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.