Quotes about feelings
page 28

“Dearest Cecilia, You’d be forgiven for thinking me mad, the way I acted this afternoon. The truth is I feel rather light headed and foolish in your presence, Cee, and I don’t think I can blame the heat.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Truth, Way, Thinking, Light

“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Books, Beauty, Housing

“One of the disadvantages of almost universal education was the fact that all kinds of persons acquired a familiarity with one's favorite writers. It gave one a curious feeling; it was like seeing a drunken stranger wrapped in one's dressing gown.”

Stella Gibbons book Cold Comfort Farm

Source: Cold Comfort Farm

Education, Universe, Personality

“In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace--and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Hope, Lying, Heart

“Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Behavior, Hurt

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”

Roger Zelazny book Nine Princes in Amber

Source: Nine Princes in Amber

Beauty

“Pain serves a purpose. Without it you are in danger. What you cannot feel you cannot take care of.”

Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby

Source: The Faraway Nearby

Pain

“The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Love

“It's the movies that have been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Memory

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me.”

Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer

How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Context: Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me.
But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held — so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place — who knows?

“But what seems like a reasonable distance to one person might feel too far to somebody else.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Personality

“There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

“He could do only one thing at a time. If he held her, he couldn't kiss her. If he kissed her, he couldn't see her. If he saw her, he couldn't feel her.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Kiss, Time

“See them together and you will feel a force that will take your breath away.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

“Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don’t give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it…”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Love, Happiness

“But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?”

Keith Richards book Life

Source: Life

Money, People, Cry

“Assume that every problem in your life is a lesson to make you stronger. Then you never feel like a victim.”

Andrew Matthews (1948) British writer

Source: Happiness Now!

Life, Problem

“I feel like Alice falling into Wonderland.
A line came to him: It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Last Guardian

Sense, Change

“He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that I am still listening. So you can still talk to me.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: Talk Before Sleep

“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Soul

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Love, Way, Personality, love

“Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.”

David Alan Harvey (1944) American photographer

“I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

God, Thinking, Strong, Parting

“How to stop time: kiss.
How to travel in time: read.
How to escape time: music.
How to feel time: write.
How to release time: breathe.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Music, Travel, Kiss, Time

“I wonder what it feels like to have no desires left because you have satisfied them all, smothered them with money even before they are born. Is an existence without desire very desirable? And is the poverty of desire better than rank poverty itself?”

Vikas Swarup book Q & A

Source: Q & A

Money

“Forgiving's a choice you make—a gift you give to somebody even if they don't deserve it. It costs nothing, but it makes you feel rich for giving it away.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: When Happily Ever After Ends

Forgiveness

“Phury?"
"No, I'm not gay."
"Don't feel like you need to hide it or anything."
"I wouldn't. I'm just not."
"You bi, then?”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

“No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

“And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death, Joy, Cheating

“Bad enough to be ill, but to feel compelled to deny the very thing that, in its worst and most active state, defines you is agony indeed.”

Sally Brampton (1955–2016) British writer

Source: Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

“If time and space, as sages say,
Are things which cannot be,
The sun which does not feel decay
No greater is than we.
So why, Love, should we ever pray
To live a century?
The butterfly that lives a day
Has lived eternity.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Love, Time, Sun

“My daddy said, that the first time you fall in love, it changes you forever and no matter how hard you try, that feeling just never goes away.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Change, Time

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”

Elizabeth Strout (1956) American writer

Source: My Name is Lucy Barton

Books

“I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Stupidity, Clothes

“Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

Life, Sense

“The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Forgetting

“She didn't want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn't fit in, but she didn't want to go home, either, because she was a tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.”

Candace Bushnell (1958) American author

Home

“Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.”

Michael Mewshaw (1943) American writer

Way, Home, Personality

“He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Dreams, Thinking, Heart

“Mr. Darcy began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“I feel ashamed now that I tried to take my life. It is such a precious thing. I had no one to talk me out of my despair and that was a mistake. You need to keep people close. You need to give them access to your heart.”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

Life, People, Heart, Despair

“Step 4: Cough and gag.
Step 5: Repeat Step 4 until it feels like maybe your lungs aren't inside your body anymore.
Step 6: Remember that a really cute boy is beside you, so try to cough in a far more attractive manner.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Boy

“I tell you what's really ridiculous--going into a bookstore and there's all these books about yourself. In a way, it feels like you're already dead.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Books, Way, Dead

“If I cling to circumstances I could feel
not responsible. Only she who says
she did not choose, is the loser in the end.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

“And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.”

Bret Easton Ellis (1964) American novelist

Sense

“Forcing him to talk about feelings all the time will not only make you seem needy, it will eventually make him lose respect. And when he loses respect, he’ll pay even less attention to your feelings.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

Time

“Man, that did his ego good. Matter of fact, she hit him with anything like that again, he was going to feel like he could bench-press a city bus. With a jet plane on its roof.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

“It was an act of devotion. A little like writing or loving someone — it doesn’t always feel worthwhile, but not giving up somehow creates unexpected meaning over time.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: It Chooses You

Love, Time

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

Life, Books, Reading

“And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Personality

“What I'm saying is that I'm trying to find rational reasons to explain irrational feelings, and that's neveer a good sign.”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

“I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Hate, People

“For children love is a feeling; for adults, it is a decision. Children wait to learn if their love is true by seeing how long it lasts; adults make their love true by never wavering from their commitment.”

Orson Scott Card book Pathfinder

Source: Pathfinder

Love, Children, Decision, Learning

“Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Happiness

“Ted said, "You're working for the Order now." "Yes." "How does it feel?" "Well, Doctor, it feels rather sore and tingly.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

“Don't hurt someone who cares about you like that. You're not the only person in the world who's ever been hurt. Don't be cruel. Don't go breaking someone else's heart in the hope that you'll feel better. Becaues you won't.”

Alison McGhee (1960) American novelist

Source: All Rivers Flow To The Sea

World, Hope, Heart, Hurt

“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is that it means there's tremendous love there too.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Love

“I drove in last night,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep, it was too hot. So I went outside. I was feeling melancholy. Then I danced with a beautiful girl, and I felt better. What's your story?”

Jude Watson book What I Saw and How I Lied

Source: What I Saw and How I Lied

Beauty, Girl, Sleep, Dance

“I'm talking about doing something good for mankind. Imagine how awesome everyone would feel if they knew all that holy stuff was real." -Gregori
"Stuff? Four years of giving sermons, and that what I get back? Holy stuff?”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: Vampire Mine

Imagination

“Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Death, Sex, Freedom, Change

“My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Complete Short Stories

Way, Heart

“Men have feelings too, you know. You bruise the petals of my manflower.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

Men

“Spending time with you just feels… right, somehow. Easy, like the way it's supposed to be. Like it is with my parents. They're just comfortable together, and I remember growing up thinking that one day I wanted to have that, too.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way, Thinking, Parent, Time

“"How do you feel?"
"Terrible. I must have gone to bed sober."”

Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man

Nora & Nick
Source: The Thin Man (1929)

“There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went, "" Or worse, feeling interrupted and tired, "Wha—?”

Lorrie Moore Birds of America

Source: Birds of America

Life, Dead

“In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Truth, Anger

“It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.”

P.G. Wodehouse book My Man Jeeves

Source: My Man Jeeves

Dogs, Time

“I can remember staring at the orphanage and feeling envy.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Envy

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love, Way, Thinking, Personality

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease… Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”

Richard Matheson book What Dreams May Come

Source: What Dreams May Come

Death, Men, Sleep

“Let us be honest: most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression.”

Beverley Nichols (1898–1983) Author, playwright, journalist, composer

Source: Beverley Nichols' Cats' A Z

Cats, Housing

“Do not judge the way i show my feelings. It's weird, it's different, but it's true.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Way

“But what now? What am I supposed to do with all these feelings?”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

Pain, Suffering, Learning

“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Life, Thinking

“You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”

Melina Marchetta book Looking for Alibrandi

Source: Looking for Alibrandi

People, Thinking

“(Zarek attacks Valerius.)
Cease! I know it’s been a long time since you were around another Dark-Hunter, Z, but remember, whatever you do to him, you will feel it tenfold. (Acheron)
Pain I can take, it’s him I can’t. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Pain, Time

“Feeling this way was a particular kind of horror, having the emotions without the memories.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Welcome to Shadowhunter Academy

Way, Memory

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Pain, Perfection

“I want to keep feeling the way I feel when I'm with you. Just tell me what I have to do. And give me some room to screw up. I've never done this before. There's a learning curve.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Way, Learning

“The perfect song on the perfect drive to make you feel infinite.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Perfection

“I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

“I feel like you can look inside me and see all the places I am odd or unusual and fit your heart around them, for you are odd and unusual in just the same way. We are the same.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Way, Heart

“Good sense is the most equitably distributed of all things because no matter how much or little a person has, everyone feels so abundantly provided with good sense that he feels no desire for more than he already possesses.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Sense, Personality

“You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.”

Paul Sweeney (1989) Scottish politician

Books, Reading

“Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.”

Douglas Coupland book Life After God

Source: Life After God

Time, Personality

“That's how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I'm still waiting.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: How to Save a Life

Life, Waiting

“… sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?"
“Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

People, Way, Thinking

“I don't think I can do it alone," I said. I had a feeling thewasn't really meant to be cast alone: as if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Truth, Thinking

“Music is what I always turn to when I'm feeling a certain way. It's my reason for everything.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Inside Connection, February 2004
Variant: I can only say so much about how I feel. Music is what I always turned to when I was feeling a certain way. It's been my reason for everything.

Music, Way