beginning of book:
The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel.
I broke something, Old Man.
How badly is it broken?
It's in a million little pieces.
I'm afraid I can't help you.
Why?
There's nothing you can do.
Why?
It can't be fixed.
Why?
It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.
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page 5:
"...and at a certain point blackness comes and my memory fails me."
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page 11:
"I am blinded by blackness."
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page 12:
"I sit in the chair by the window staring. I don't know what I'm staring at and I don't care. It's dark and it's late and I can't sleep anymore."
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page 13:
"I watch the television. Everything slows down. Slows down beyond recognition.
The image blurs and a symphony of withered voices. I stare at the lights, listen to the voices. I want them to go away and they won't."
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page 20:
"I can feel blood dripping from the wounds on my face and I can feel my heart beating and I can feel the weight of my life beginning to drop and I realize why dawn is called mourning."
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page 21:
"Although it hurts, it feels good... It hurts but I deserve it."
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page 21&22:
"I'm scared to see myself...
Scared of the hate that my own image can conjure."
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page 22:
"I almost feel human."
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page 25&26:
"I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't."
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page34:
"The weather has gotten worse. Black clouds fill the Sky and patches of snow gather along the Ground. What once was green is brown. What once had leaves now has none. It's cold and it's winter and the World has gone to sleep."
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page 35:
"Looks like that might be an understatement.
Looks are not deceiving."
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page 36:
"...he nods and I nod and for a brief second I feel strong. Not strong enough to face myself, but strong enough to keep going."
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page 40&41:
"It hurts, but I want the pain because it makes this nightmare a reality and it keeps me from going insane. The pain is immense, but I need it because it keeps me from going insane."
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page 44:
"I hang up the phone and I stare at the floor and I think about my Mother and my Father in a Hotel Room in Chicago and I wonder why they still love me and why I can't love them back and how two normal stable people could have created something like me, lived with something like me and tolerated something like me. I stare at the floor and I wonder. How did they tolerate me."
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page 45:
"At a certain point my eyes close and at a certain point I fall asleep."
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page 46:
"For the briefest instant I feel complete. The pain I carry with me disappears. I feel comfortable and at rest, confident and secure, calm and composed. I feel good. G------ it, I feel f------ good."
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page 47:
" I lean over and place my nose just above the shimmering surface of the gasoline and I stare into the face of chemical annihilation. This face is my friend, my enemy and my only option. I take it."
"I'm scared and I'm alone and it's early in the morning and no one is away yet."
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page 48:
"He's gone. Definitely gone and definitely not coming back."
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page 54:
"And then you attacked Roy.
I turn, stare back.
Roy got in my face. I got him out of my face."
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page 57:
"I look at no one and acknowledge no one. I'm in my head and in my head I'm alone. I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do."
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page 61:
"We pull into a town and it is empty. There are no parked cars, no shoppers, no young Mothers walking with Children, no old men on benches with coffee and words of wisdom. The Stores are open, but they're not doing business. The only things out are thunder and sleet and wind. They are getting stronger."
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page 65:
"... and it feels as if my mouth is full of soft fibrous dirt and almost instantly, everything is dry."
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page 62:
"There is a surgical chair sitting in the middle of the floor. It is metal and it has green cushions and long menacing arms and all sorts of straps and buttons and levers and gears. It looks like a medieval torture device. I know it is for me."
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page 66:
"...and my heart beats even and strong as if it needs the test of this ordeal to prove that it works correctly."
"I prepare for more but I'm not prepared for what hits me."
"The electric pain shoots and it shoots at a trillion volts and it is white and burning... The pain is greater than anything I've ever felt and it is greater than anything I could have imagined. It overwhelms every muscle and every fiber and every cell in my body and everything goes limp."
"Every fiber and every cell is limp...
Every fiber and every cell is white hot and burning...
The pain is greater than I could have imagined."
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page 67:
The stuffing buffers the open pain of the hole and the piercing pain fades and a dull throbbing agony remains and my heart beats strong and steady and the agony beats along with it and it doesn't bother me. I have lived with agony for so long that as it beats along with my strong and steady heart, it doesn't bother me."
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page 69:
"There is a tennis ball in each of my hands and there is the knowledge that I'm about to undergo a dual root-canal procedure without any anesthesia. There is the sound of my eart beating ever more quickly. There is anticipation. There is fear. There is no comfort."
"... a current shoots through my body that is not pain, or even close to pain, but something infinitely greater."
"My brain is white and it feels as if it's f------ melting. I cannot breath. Agony."
"I start to fade into a state of white consciousness where I am no longer directly connected to what is being done to me. My arms are no longer my arms, my legs are not my legs, my chest is not my chest, my face is not my face, my teeth do not belong to me. My body is no longer my body. There is white. Everywhere there is white. There is agony. It is agony that is unfathomable. I try to will myself back to reality..."
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page 70:
"My body won't let me come back. It is as if it is sparing my mind what it can and pushing into a realm that is horrible, but somehow less horrible. I give up and I give in and I am consumed by the whiteness and the agony and I am there for what seems to be eternity. The whiteness and the agony. The whiteness and the agony. The whiteness and the agony."
"...and every single cell of my body feels as if it is going to explode from the force of the pain. If there was a God, I would spit in his face for subjecting me to this. If there was a Devil, I would sell him my soul to make it end. If there was something Higher than controlled our individual fates, I would tell it to take my fate..."
"All I can do is endure."
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page 71:
"I have always deal with pain alone. I will deal with it alone now."
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page 72:
"I look like a f------ monster."
"We are two men who have just been through a terrible ordeal together. Although it was worse for me, I know it wasn't easy for him. This hug is our bond, our bond to learn from what we have just been through and become better and stronger because of it. I know he will keep the bond, I don't know if I can. I pull away."
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page 73:
"I turn and I slowly walk away and I don't look back. It has always been a fault of mine, but it is the way I am. I never look back. Never."
"Each step is more difficult than the last, each step hurts more. My face is throbbing to the rhythm of my heart, the rhythm of my heart is not as strong or as steady as it was. It is speeding up and slowing down, beating with irregular strength, sending sharp messages through my left arm and my jaw. It held when it needed to hold, but it's not going to hold much longer. I'm not going to hold much longer."
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page 74:
"This is not the life I want or who I want to be but I don't know anything else. I have tried to change before and I have failed. I have tried to change again and again and again and I have failed over and over and over. If there was something to make me think this time would be different, I would try, but there isn't. If there was a light at the end of the tunnel I would run to it. I am worse than I have ever been before. If there was a light at the end of the tunnel I would run to it... There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
"...and I'm tired beyond exhaustion and I close my eyes. It it dark. I close my eyes. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. I close my eyes. It is dark. I close my eyes. There's no light. I close my eyes. Dark.
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes."
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page 77:
It moves on to the story of Bill, who is the founder of AA. Bill is the Jesus Christ of the movement, the Savior, the Messiah, and although Bill did not die on the cross, he certainly lived on it.
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page 79:
" I deserve this hurt for not being brave enough to look at myself. I deserve this hurt and I will stand and I will take it because I am not brave enough to look into my own eyes."
"The burning is tiring and the cold tires me more. I close my eyes and I let my body shut itself down and I let my mind wander. It wanders to a familiar place. A place I don't talk about of acknowledge it exists. A place where there is only me. A place that I hate."
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page 80:
"At first I made an effort to fit in, but I couldn't pretend, and after a few weeks, I stopped trying. I am who I am and they could either like me or hate me. They hated me..."
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page 85:
"It feels as if my body is trying to rid itself of itself. It is trying to rid itself of me."
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page 94:
"That is what I am and who I am and that is how I should be remembered. No happy lies, no invented memories, no fake sentimentality, no tears. I do not deserve tears. I deserve to be portrayed honestly and I deserve nothing more and I start to write an honest obituary in my own mind. I write the obituary that should appear, but never will. I start at the beginning and I stick to the facts and I move to what I know will be my end."
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page 95:
"In my mind, my obituary is done. It is done and it is right. It tells the truth, and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I am remembered at all. Remember the truth. It is all that matters."
"I have made my decision and I am comfortable with my decision. It's what I always knew would happen, though the details are just now coming into focus."
"I am going to leave here and I'm not going to look back and I'm not going to say good-bye. I have lived alone, I have fought alone, I have dealt with pain alone. I will die alone."
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page 96:
"I touch the skin on my neck, my chest, my arms. It will all be rotting soon. Decomposing and disintegrating. Disappearing. Every trace will cease to exist. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We return from which we came. I will be rotting and decomposing and disintegrating soon."
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page 99:
"The men who don't believe in amends are the worst of the group. They know that most of what they have done shouldn't be forgiven and won't be forgiven. They don't want to make the effort of asking because the pain of rejection and the reminder of their actions will hurt too much. They want to move on and forget, even though forgetting is impossible... I know I won't be forgiven and I'm not going to bother to ask. My amends will be my death. No one I have hurt will ever have to see me, hear from me, or think about me ever again. I won't be able to damage them or f--- up their lives anymore, I won't be able to cause them the pain I have caused previously. Forget me if you can. Forget i ever existed, forget I did whatever it was I did. My suicide will be my apology. Even though it is impossible, please forget me. Please forget."
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page 101:
"Though I doubt we would talk much, it would be nice to hold each of their hands, tell them that I'm sorry... Though I doubt we would talk much, I would like to tell them to forget me."
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page 102:
"...and I will stay there until I die. Before I do, however, I want one last look at something beautiful. I want one last look so that I have something to hold in my mind while I'm dying, so that when I take my last breath I will be able to think of something that will make me smile, so in the midst of that horror I can hold on to some shred of humanity."
"I am going to die. When I die I will be dead, gone, no more. There will be no more thinking, no more breathing, no more feeling of any kind. There will be blackness and the blackness will be eternal. There will be silence and the silence will last forever. I am going to die."
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page 104:
"I have lived alone. I am about to die alone."
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page 108:
"There is truth in his eyes. Truth is all that matters."
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page 116:
"The stitches are old and black...and they look like barbed wire... The stitches are black and they weave in and out of one another like a vicious fence.
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page 125:
"Part of me still loves. More of me doesn't."
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page 127:
"It was an awful time and her friend was in awful shape, but she got better and she is still better today. The memories are bittersweet."
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page 165:
"Open mind, empty mind. I wonder if they're the same thing."
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page 169:
"I think you're stronger than you know."
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page 173:
"I lost everything and I am lost reduced to a mass of mourning, sadness, grief, anguish and heartache. I am lost. I have lost. Everything. Everything."
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page 179:
"I skip the Introduction. If the book goes in the trash, I want it to go because of my thoughts on it, not because of some A------'s thoughts on who wrote the Introduction."
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page 185:
"If I was where she was I stared at her. I wanted to talk to her, but I didn't. Never hello, never how are you, never what's up, never what's new, I never said a word, I just stared at her. After a while I knew that she knew I was doing it, but she never told me to stop. I just stared."
"If she hadn't come back, I would have left to find her. She was away away and if she hadn't come back, I would have searched to the end of the Earth. I would have searched until I found her."
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page 186&187:
"I took a deep breath.
The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen.
I stared at her.
You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven't grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you're mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you're tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful.
I stared at her.
When I see you the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There's nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops, and it is a beautiful place, and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you.
I stared.
When you're gone, the World starts again, and I don't like it as much. I can live in it, but I don't like it. I just walk around in it and wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It's the best f------ thing I've ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful Girl, is why I stare at you."
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page 187&188:
"I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed. It takes me the tick and it holds me and it carries and keeps me like a slow swing of a pendulum before the eyes of an idiot. The World has stopped not like before and not in a good way. It has stopped and is not going forward the same way my life has stopped and is not going forward. If is not going forward or backward or anywhere at all it has just stopped. It has just stopped."
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page 188:
"I am surviving."
"The dark shifts away from itself and light invades and conquers it."
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page 193:
"It is a strong shaking sobbing wracking weeping, the weeping that comes form a wound that will never heal. I let him weep, leave him be with his memories and his loss and his pain. I would offer him comfort, but it wouldn't matter. The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone."
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page210:
"I stare at me but not me. I see the damage and pain of hard years. I see the emptiness and desperation of existence without hope. I see a young life that has been too long. I see me, but not me. I trust myself."
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page 211:
"It is a deep smile, not the type of momentary happiness, but the rare kind that comes when something inside without words is woken up from slumber and brought forth to live. Though I know it will disappear from her face, it will stay in her and with her long after it does. It has woken and it will live."
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page 229:
"Noise destroying silence, silence overwhelming noise. Reflections slowly move along the water distorting what is real the object or the image. They are both real and it is all real. It all is in front of me life is in front of me and behind me and above me below me surrounding me. I can see it and feel it and hear it and touch it. Inside and outside. Right now."
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page 231:
"She smiles. It's a sweet, subtle smile. The type of smile that would break your heart if you stared at it too long."
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page 259:
"There are awkward smiles and frustrated sighs."
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page 264:
"He pulls her in tight, reassuring her through his arms."
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page 265:
"I want to get for their forgiveness, but it's not going to happen. I want to take their hands and tell them everything is going to be okay, but that's not a promise I know I can make.
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page 266:
"I am alone and the Fury is within me. It is not raging, nor near it's height, but it is there. It flows though my veins like a slow, lazy virus, urging me to do damage, but not enough damage to constitute destruction."
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page 272:
"In the shadows I am safe and I am strong and I am comfortable. I know I won't get caught in the shadows."
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page 316:
"This Girl who has been through things of which she cannot speak. This Girl with nothing. This Girl with nothing but her own strength and a desire to be free. With nothing but a beating heart that is scared to be alone. With nothing but clear blue eyes that see through me and understand me. With nothing but open arms ready to receive me. To stand by me. To walk with me. To love me. I love her. Lilly. The Girl with nothing and everything. Lilly. I love her.
"Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough. It doesn't communicate even a fraction of the feelings involved. Love. The word is not enough for what is is. Love. Love."
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page 332:
"All of us started out normal. All of us started out as functioning human beings with the potential to do almost anything we wanted, but somewhere along the paths of our lives, we got lost."
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page 345:
"I'm not going to stay in a place where A------- like you say that their Job is to help People, but when someone needs help most, you deny it to them because they believe in something different than you or need a different kind of help than what you think is right."
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page 358:
"I would give my life if it could somehow make her better. I would have given it earlier tonight, I would give it in the future. If it would make any difference, I would give her my life. I know it won't make a difference. I cry."
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page 361:
"The dreams are real, or as real as dreams can be, and in them I see and I hear and I feel and I touch. Inside and out. Images like running film, sounds like a stereo."
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page 371:
"A second is no more than a second, a minute no more than a minute, a day no more than a day. They pass. All things and all time will pass."
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page 375:
"Our pasts are nonexistent, our futures but a distant fear."
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page 381:
"Tomorrow we go back to reality. Everyone stays awake because no one wants the night to end."
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page 384:
"We are all awful. It is easier to laugh at ourselves than cry at ourselves. We are awful."
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page 394:
"The Sun is shining. Bright and high, though not warm. A slow breeze moves the air like a whisper."
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page 395:
"As I write the wrongs of my early childhood, most of them make me laugh."
"I learned the strength of words and I used them."
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page 399:
"When I wake it is morning early morning. Not dark, but not yet light. It is gray. Gray like fading sadness, gray like rising fear. Not dark, but not yet light."
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page 414:
"What is rooted will grow... The giant tree grows from a single seed. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step... Hold on to things too tight and you'll lose them."
"If you want to be whole, you must first be partial... If you want to be reborn, you must first die."
"That true power seems weak, that true purity seems tarnished, that true resolve seems changeable, that true clarity seems obscure."
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page 415:
"I hear a song that doesn't come from notes on a page but from a beating human heart. I hear sorrow and shame and hope and redemption. I hear a past that doesn't matter and the future that never comes. I hear harmony and simplicity and patience, I hear discipline and compassion. I hear it all now."
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page 428:
"I close my eyes. I stop moving when the tip of my nose hits the liquid. I close my mouth and I take a deep breath and it comes comes comes. With all its strength. The beautiful aroma of oblivion. The foul stench of Hell... Though it has not met my lips or entered my body, I can taste it. Like sweet strong charcoal mixed with bitter gasoline."
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page 430:
"I touched it and I smelled it and I felt it, but I didn't drink it. I'm done drinking. Won't ever do it again."
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