A Collection of Quotes That I Will at Some Point Post on My Tumblr or, Why Is This so Unbearable?

“Listen to me. I’m shy. I’m not stupid. I can’t meet people’s eyes. I don’t know if you understand what that’s like. There’s a whole world going on around me, I’m aware of that. It’s not because I don’t want to look at you, Lucinda. It’s that I don’t want to be seen. I’m afraid of what you’ll see inside me.”
— Jonathan Lethem


“With special regard to unreality, I shrug in silence. I am not scared. I love this fully conscious imprisonment in unreality; it somehow makes me romanticize with something sensuously genuine. Oh it’s another self-trap; you know best. Yet there is something very consoling, very personal in it. I am constructing my reality with unreal, otherworldly materials. It is almost poetic; this outstanding self-manipulation. (I am rather scared to death.)”
— Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence 1950-1963


“My dear, you are in danger of being burned by your own flame.”
— Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit


“Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present.”
— Marcus Aurelis, The Meditations


“I am aware of myself. And, of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn’t it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?”
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We