I think loneliness means that the emotions of the person you are facing are not on the same frequency as your own.

---002---

Loneliness is the inevitable darkness in life. It cannot be crossed or defeated. If we understand this, we will feel that people don’t need so many things: fame, money, luxury goods, friends or love, marriage. At least, we can take things as they come, because we use these things to fight loneliness, but we can’t win. The only thing we can do is to live with it peacefully.

---003---

If my work has any theme, I think it is just a simple one: people are lonely, no one can escape, and this is their tragedy.

---004---

If a person wants to do something that is truly true to his or her heart, then he or she can often only do it alone.

---005---

People are all alone, no one can escape, and that is their tragedy.

---006---

"Can you wait for me at the top steps of the library?" "Why?"

"I want to stand there, strike a pose, like a princess in a castle, and have you climb all those lovely steps to take me away."

---007---

The loneliness in the world of emotions is sometimes like a silent snowfield before dawn. The hustle and bustle is all in dreams, and so is the warmth. The sound falls into the wind and can never be recovered.

---008---

What you call "love" is actually an illusion. You cowardly cower in this illusion. In fact, you know as well as I do that there is nothing between us except mutual contempt and distrust, and the ugliest thing, finding satisfaction in each other's weaknesses. This is why. This is why I can't stop laughing when you say I am incapable of love. This is why I can't stand you touching me anymore, and this is why I no longer believe what you think, let alone what you say...

---009---

Intelligent, thoughtful people know exactly how to cope with this, just as they know how to endure even more unreasonable things: working a boring job in the city, living in a boring suburb. You may be forced into such an environment by the economic situation, but the most important thing is not to be corrupted by it. The most important thing, always, is to remember who you are.

---010---

It is not easy to cheat day after day; it requires the constant vigilance and cunning of a criminal.

---011---

He knew that crying was meant to be released before it became a cliché, that sadness was meant to be released while it was still genuine. At these times, the pain was just pain, nothing mixed in. Because everything could easily be distorted: exaggerate the power of sadness, incite yourself to cry, or go around saying Frank was courageous with a melancholy, sentimental smile, and then what the hell would you have left?

---012---

"This feeling is exactly in line with his idea of ​​marriage: not stimulating or exciting, but with a sense of security of mutual dependence, maintained by equal tenderness, embellished with some romance... When they sat and chatted calmly, Frank felt a thrill of pleasure, just like the feeling of a person who went out before dawn and suddenly felt the first ray of sunshine on his neck."

---013---

It is easy to admire excellence, but difficult to like it.

---014---

The truth is a funny thing

---015---

Do you really think that only artists and writers have the right to live the life they want? Listen, I don't mind if you do nothing for five years, and I don't mind if you tell me after five years that all you wanted to be was a bricklayer, or a mechanic, or a sailor. Don't you understand what I mean? What I'm saying has nothing to do with perceived talent. It's your essence that is being held captive. It's you, the real you, being denied, denied, and denied.

---016---

"There's no reason why," she said. "Compared to loving, there's no more reason why not loving. Can't most smart people understand that?"

---017---

If you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

If a person wants to do something that is truly true to his or her heart, then he or she can often only do it alone.

---018---

“Sometimes I feel like I’m glowing,” she whispers, “and I just want to go out there and do something completely crazy and unthinkable.”

---019---

In this world full of mediocre people, as long as there is a ray of sunshine, it can warm a large number of people.

---020---

The whole country has been corrupted by a false romanticism that has spread like a disease over many years, through many generations, so that today everything you touch is contaminated with this germ.

……

Whatever it is, it's destroying America. Isn't it? All thoughts and feelings have been reduced to easily digestible baby food. The romantic sentiment of blind optimism, of smiling at everything, of there being an easy way out, has been ingrained into everyone's outlook on life.

---021---

It takes backbone to lead the life you want.

It takes courage to live the life you want.

---022---

A person's requirements in life are not just money.

---023---

Maybe I understand that sometimes a person does something like that, not really wanting to hurt anyone, but just because he is unhappy. He knows that it is not good to do that, and he knows that he will not be happy after doing it, but he still insists on doing it regardless of the consequences. Then he finds that he has lost his friend, and he is very sad, but it is too late. It has been done.

---024---

Once he started doing this, he found that he couldn't stop, or didn't want to stop, because the thin, simple melody it played reminded him of all the loss and loneliness in the world.

---025---

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations.

Precisely because he has no specific goal, he avoids certain limitations.

---026---

Isn't that the worst thing? I don't want a child any more than she does. From that moment on, his life was a series of things he didn't want. He chose a boring job just to prove that he could take responsibility like any man with a family; moved into an overpriced luxury apartment to prove that he believed in order and health; had a second child to prove that the first was not a mistake; bought a house in the suburbs because it was the next step in the normal life trajectory, and he proved that he could do it.

---027---

"You didn't really think I believed some nonsense about someone in the family being sick, did you? What young wife would go across the ocean with a belly like that? Carol thought I believed it, and I was even a little upset at the time. I kept wanting to say, oh, tell me about it, honey, tell me about it. Because you know, when you get old, Warren..." Tears welled up in her eyes and she couldn't wipe them away with her hands. "When you get old, you really want the people you love to be happy.

---028---

From the beginning, and for the next year, we spent almost all of our time together except when we were at work. It might not have been love, but we wouldn't have been convinced at the time because we kept telling each other and ourselves that it was love. If we argued a lot, the movie proved it over and over again. We couldn't avoid each other, but I think after a while we both began to wonder if it was because neither of us had anywhere else to go.

---029---

She had learned the value of honesty in everything: if you dealt with the world honestly, you never had to take anything back.

---030---

His self-confidence was totally uncharacteristically high, and he began to see himself as a rare but unique spiritual adventurer.

---031---

Our vision will carry us through military training, but soon, when we reach the front lines, our vision will no longer be clear. Then we will enter into our own blindness - if not physically, then certainly in the psychological sense of the word. When we return, if we ever return, we will find ourselves changed forever.

---032---

As for Frank himself, whether walking down the street after each conversation or lying in his room on Bethune Street thinking without a woman by his side, he never doubted that he had a unique talent and a future. Aren't all the biographies of famous people recorded in this kind of exploration in youth? Those rebellions against their fathers and their fathers' life paths. Thinking of this, Frank was even glad that he had no specific interests. Precisely because he had no specific goals, he avoided specific restrictions. At that time, the whole world, life itself, could become his field of choice.

---033---

Have you ever thought about the amount of pure sexual energy that's inside of us? Especially at this time of night. Imagine what we'd see if the big stone wall of the dorm collapsed: one hundred and twenty-five kids masturbating."

---034---

He slowly played the music box upside down, as if he wanted to remember this soft, melancholy melody forever. He let it evoke a scene - Christine lying in his arms and murmuring "Oh, I love you", because he wanted to remember this too, and then he let go of the music box and let it fall into the trash.

---035---

He summons his best speeches: the pointed comments that made Millie exclaim, “Oh, you’re so right, Frank!” and the older, deeper wit that made April Johnson call him “the funniest guy I’ve ever met.” He even touches on his days as a longshoreman. He weaves these narratives together into a thread that paints a self-portrait tailor-made for Molly: a competent but disillusioned young married man struggling sadly and courageously against his circumstances.

---036---

I have often mistaken your gentleness for weakness—that is certainly the worst mistake I have ever made, and it pains me to think about it, but there are many others...

---037---

So from the beginning, it was a farewell thing, right.

---038---

There was a performative quality to their words, a bit of false enthusiasm, as if they were talking to some romantic character and not to him, a real man.

---039---

He turned the crank in the opposite direction, slowly, with the feeling of a child doing some experiment for no reason. Once he started doing this, he found that he couldn't stop, or didn't want to stop, because the thin and simple melody it played reminded people of all the loss and loneliness in the world.

---040---

I discovered or rediscovered the joy of crying—discovered that crying can be an incomparable joy if your head is buried in your mother's waist and her hands are on your back and if she happens to have clean clothes on.

---041---

There would be no more classes in our room. We would probably never see Bart again—or if we did, he would probably not want to see us. But our mother was ours and we were hers; we lived with that knowledge as we lay there listening to a million small, tiny voices.

---042---

Sometimes, major turning points and changes in a person's life come suddenly out of nowhere.

---043---

I prefer to believe that everyone is independent. Our first priority is always ourselves, and we have to do our best to live well.

---044---

The question is never what people 'want' or 'need' - it's what they are willing to endure.

---045---

Tragedy is not meant to happen in Revolution Hill. This quiet, warm, sunny suburb can meet all the needs of its residents, but it is not prepared to accept tragedy. The architectural planning here seems to have been deliberately arranged, even at night, there are no heavy shadows or hidden areas. There is only joy, only brightness, and only the creamy white houses, like children's model toys, with the same warm light pouring out through the open windows.

---046---

I tried to imagine him as a young man, before GE captured him, traveling alone around upstate New York, trying to make a living singing songs. He must have been brave, sensitive, and a little self-important, but also often tired and full of doubt until he gave up on his dream altogether.

---047---

Knowing what you've got,comma,

Knowing what you need,comma,

Knowing what you can do without,dash,

That's inventory control.

---048---

"Oh, I don't know," Ward said. "To be so close to what you want in life and never quite get it - never quite get it - I guess that's the nature of life." When Ward was serious, he could be more serious than anyone who had reason to be serious.

---049---

She was so elegant that she looked like a Broadway actress that he had only seen in photos. The way she walked was like she was silently burning.

---050---

There is a rule at Dorset that first-years must live in a room by themselves; having a roommate is a privilege reserved for the "older" kids. Every May, when the double-room assignments are announced, there is always a lot of anxiety. "Hey," one child will shyly say to another. "Can we live together next year?" "Uh, but I'm already committed." "Oh." All week long, the quad is filled with awkward conversations like this; it is a period of subtle pursuits, heartbreaks, and ultimately second-best choices.

---051---

Didn't everyone need to feel, and have the right to feel, useful at some point? Even at the end of a lonely, neglected life? Oh, they'll miss me when I'm gone, Myra Stone thought, but the worst part was that she couldn't even be sure of that.

---052---

"When you speak, Steve," Jock McKenzie had told him, "it doesn't matter who you're talking to or what you're saying, it's important to know when to stop. Don't say anything unless it's better than nothing.

---053---

I may always ask my father this question deep down, when I failed, when I sought his love, when I cared for his love but didn't find it; but all of that - just like the times when he was often asked to sing "Young Danny" and he would step back, shake his hand slightly to express his refusal, a smile and a frown on his face at the same time - all of that is in the past.

---054---

When you get old, you want the people you love to live a happy life.

---055---

I had always known that no one cared about me, and I had always let others know that I was fully aware of their indifference.

---056---

From the beginning, the members were afraid that after investing so many years, they would achieve nothing and be laughed at by others as if they were fools. Their fear was compounded by their fear of admitting it.

---057---

She became delicate and artificial at one moment, and then she was so nervous that she was at a loss. She always raised her shoulders very high and straight, and through the thick makeup, the audience could still clearly see the embarrassment and humiliation rising between her face and neck.

---058---

Right before his eyes, she became embarrassed and miserable. Although he tried to erase this image every day, he knew her as painfully and thoroughly as he knew himself. Her face was haggard, her red eyes flashed with resentment, and the hypocritical smile she forced out at the curtain call was not charming at all, just like his sore feet, his gradually damp underwear, and the sour smell on his body.

---059---

You know what? You'll find that there are few things in life more satisfying than making a girl laugh. Except, of course, sleeping with her.