Quotes from book

Fear of Flying

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.”

“Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.”

“There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.”

“Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.”

“Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it…”

“I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps. We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves!”

“I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.”

“All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.”

“I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you.”

“Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound.”

“Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world.”

“Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love…”

“It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present.”

“The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job.”

“I'm very dependant. I fall apart regularly.”

“Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life.”

“Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments.”

“Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head… it's only a matter of degree.”

“Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style.”