#desperation

He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love is nevertheless excluded from his work, it's because he never quite felt that he deserved to receive it. He was a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself. What looked like gentle contours from a distance were in fact sheer cliffs. Sometimes only a little of him was crazy, sometimes nearly all of him, but, as an adult, he was never entirely not crazy. What he'd seen of his id while trying to escape his island prison by way of drugs and alcohol, only to find himself even more imprisoned by addiction, seems never to have ceased to be corrosive of his belief in his lovability. Even after he got clean, even decades after his late-adolescent suicide attempt, even after his slow and heroic construction of a life for himself, he felt undeserving. And this feeling was intertwined, ultimately to the point of indistinguishability, with the thought of suicide, which was the one sure way out of his imprisonment; surer than addiction, surer than fiction, and surer, finally, than love. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#david-foster-wallace #desperation #love #mental-illness #self-confidence

Now people want what the movie was about, which is violent comedy. And that's really what The Aristocrats is based on - what will a family do out of desperation. ↗

— Bob Saget

#aristocrats #based #comedy #desperation #family

SONG OF DAWN I saw the sun rise by accident. It was a horrible sight. Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refuge in a moist pillow, and lay there, alone, at the dawn of another day, that brought me closer to another death, pondering the vanity of my solitude, the vanity of procrastination, and the tiresome inevitability of waking up again the same person. It might still be possible to change, but obstinately I remain the same, hoping that others might take solace in my consistency. But perhaps they take no solace in it, perhaps they too find it tedious. ↗

— John Tottenham

#regret #vanity #change

For weeks Tyrone thought he was going to die any minute, and there were also times when he was afraid he wasnt going to die. ↗

— Hubert Selby Jr.

#desperation #suicide #dreams

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know. ↗

— Albert Camus

#humor #death

When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#desperation #hope #inspiration #misattributed #tenacity

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#desperation #escape #las-vegas #los-angeles #nevada

I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you. ↗

— Uma Thurman

#business #crazy #dead #desperation #drive

And also I think particularly as a female, you're taught to be defensive your whole life. You're taught not to be aggressive. ↗

— Uma Thurman

#business #crazy #dead #desperation #drive

Don't judge me. Ethics and morality no longer exist in our world. It's a luxury of the past, afforded only to those who had a future. ↗

— T.M. Williams

#desperation #ethics #luxury #morality #tm-williams