Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You

"I didn't answer. I knew she was right, but that didn't change the way I felt about things at all. People always think that if they can prove that they're right, you'll change your mind."

"It's odd what facets of life children incorporate into their play. I started to think about this, about how we wanted to assume the dreariest aspects of adult life: playing office, playing store.. playing mental asylum."

"I think I could do other things with the money that would be better for me than going to college."
"Such as?" My grandmother asked.
I didn't answer because it was suddenly clear to me, for a second or two, that part of this not wanting to go to college was simply a desire not to move forward, for I loved where I was at the moment, and felt that so surely and keenly: sitting in my grandmothers kitchen.. All around us not yet totally violated by stupidity and intolerance and hate.


"But wouldn't you be lonely?"
"I don't mind being lonely," I said, "I am lonely now, here, living in New York. It makes it worse in New York because you see people interacting everywhere you go, all the time. Constantly."
"Just because people interact doesn't mean they aren't lonely."

"How should I know if this will help me? It's like asking someone who's swimming the English channel if they will get across. There's no way they can know."
"But they can believe they can swim across. Otherwise why would they set out? You wouldn't begin to swim across the Channel if you didn't think you could make it."
"You might."

"You're sitting all alone. Come join us.."
This is something I really hate. Really, really hate- when people react to your being alone as some kind of problem for them. I knew the only reason she wanted me to come and sit at her table was that she wanted to do someone a favor. My sitting alone bothered her; it's like how you resent those people standing up on the subway when you're seated.

I find it disturbing that so much seemingly altruistic behavior is really quite selfish. Even so-called saints like Mother Teresa bother me. In some ways she was just as ambitious as people like my father or anyone who wants to be on top of their profession. Mother Teresa wanted to be the best saint, the top saint, so she did the most disgusting things she could do, and I know she helped people and relieved suffering and I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying I think she was just as selfish and ambitious as everyone else. The problem with thinking this way is that if you want to avoid this kind of ambition and selfishness you should do absolutely nothing- do no harm, but do no good either. Do nothing: don't presume to interfere with the world.

...I knew the note would upset my mother. I thought maybe I should throw it away. I thought, what's the point of her reading it? Then I thought about how in Tess of the AngleD'Urbervilles Clare doesn't find the note that Tess slips under his door because it slides beneath the rug and how basically because of that a lot of awful things happen and she ends up dead and so I decided not to interfere with the natural course of events.

"That's the awful thing about being addicted to something. Even while you're doing it, and loving it, you know it's wrong and you know you're weak, and you know you're probably ruining your life. I knew it was a mistake, a terrible mistake. But I did it anyway."

'A young man and woman walked past- they were walking a bit apart from one another with a space between them, and the man was looking straight ahead and the woman had her arms crossed against her chest, hugging herself, looking down at her feet. They both had the same gleefully suppressed smile on their faces, and I knew that they were freshly in love. Perhaps they had just fallen in love at dinner, perhaps they haven't even kissed yet. And they walked apart because they had their whole lives to walk close together, touching, and wanted to anticipate the moment they touched for as long as possible. Something about watching them made me sad. The summer night, the open-toed shoes, their faces rapt with momentarily tamped-down joy. I felt I had witnessed their happiest moment, the pinnacle, and they were already walking away from it, but they didn't know it..'

Love is never wasted.
You are cleansed by sleep and dreams.
Have faith in nature.
Be challenged by defeat.
Believe in what you love.
Re-create your life every day.
Everything is always changing. Nothing lasts. It's okay.

'I thought, it's enough that I've thought that, I don't need to share it. Most people think that things are not real unless they are spoken, that it's the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say, "I love you." I think just the opposite- that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or dilutes them, that it is best for them to stay in the dark climate-controlled airport chapel of your mind, that if they're released into the air and light they will be affected in a way that alters them, like film accidentally exposed.'

'I feel like we cannot go on with our lives like nothing happened. For instance, the Mexican boy, cutting the lawn in Hartsdale, how did he get there, where did he live, what was he thinking? It's like there's this pyramid of his life, an iceberg, and I just saw the the tip of it, the tiny tip, but it spreads out beneath that, spreads out back and back, his entire life beneath him, inside of him, everything that has ever happened to him, all adding up to equal the moment, the second, he waved back at me.

What if she was meant to be, or could have been someone important in my life? What if the Mexican boy was lonely too? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. A stranger, yet I felt walking away I was abandoning him. That I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people.

No one can understand who you were at a particular moment unless they understood the pyramid beneath you. We forget that.

"You know," my grandmother said, "I think it's rather a heartening story what you told me. You acted stupidly and made a mess, but nevertheless I find it heartening."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you wanted something, and tried to get it. You acted. You acted stupidly, but you acted, and that's the important part. And people often act stupidly when it comes to love."

"And if college is all wrong for you, if you really don't like it in the way you fear, well- it won't be a waste to have gone. Having bad experiences helps.l it makes it clearer what it is you should be doing. People who have only had good experiences aren't very interesting. They may be content and happy after a fashion, but they don't go in very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but it's easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is simple. But I don't think you're going to have a life like that, and I think you'll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed with the bad patches. You musn't let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift- a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless."


"When you long with all of your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death."

Be patient and tough: Someday this pain will be useful to you.