Sara Barnard > Quotes

“When I’d heard ‘abuse’, I’d thought of violence as being something simple... I hadn’t even considered the framework that allowed it to happen in the first place. The blind eyes turned, the excuses made, the insidious lies whispered into the ear of a child so desperate for love they mistook a gentle tone for truth.”
― Sara Barnard, Beautiful Broken Things

“I’m just saying that sadness isn’t beautiful. And if it looks that way, it’s a lie.”
― Sara Barnard, Beautiful Broken Things

“I wondered, for the first time, what it must have been like to leave them all behind and start over. To trust the strangers you met with the weight of the second chance you’s been given.”
― Sara Barnard, Beautiful Broken Things

“And then it happens. The panic. It's slow at first, creeping through the cracks in my thoughts until everything starts to feel heavy. It builds; it becomes something physical that clutches at my insides and squeezes out the air and the blood.”
― Sara Barnard

“Maybe disappointment does lie in the gulf between what you would do for someone and what they will do for you, but she knows then, in that moment, as she's looking out of the rain-speckled window at the black, black sky, that she needs to stop focusing on what she's willing to do for other people and start focusing on what she's willing to do for herself.”
― Sara Barnard, Floored

“With lightning, you're never really sure if that's what it was; it's just a flash. Thunder, you know. You feel it.'
'You can keep your quiet thunder. I'll keep the exciting lightning.”
― Sara Barnard

“Mum has had an anxious daughter for sixteen years and she still doesn't seem to get the concept of little victories. The spending an evening where I wasn't feeling sick every time someone asked me a question is actually a really big deal [...] There's no such thing as getting your hopes up if you're anxious. Little victories are everything in a world where worst-case scenarios are on an endless loop in your head.”
― sara barnard

“It's total bullshit. I hate it when people make sadness all deep and beautiful and, like- profound. That's the word it's not profound. It's not beautiful. It sucks. It sucks balls. I think it makes non-sad people feel better. Like, they think if must be a good thing to be sad, because you're getting all this insight into real life and pain or whatever. Like how people say tears are like rain. Fuck off. Tears are just tears and they make your eyes hurt and they won stop when you want them to and ugh you get all those arty photos of girls crying - it's always girls, have you noticed?- and it's so beautiful and tasteful and moving. When the reality is your face goes all blotchy and your nose runs and you can taste it every time you breathe'
'Taste what?'
'It. Pain. Sadness. I'm just saying that sadness isn't beautiful and if it looks that way, it's a lie.”
― Sara Barnard

“I was sixteen, and I honestly believed that I was due a love story.”
― Sara Barnard

“She was crazy, and she was unpredictable, but she was also generous and open-hearted and like no friend I'd ever had before.”
― Sara Barnard

“Chronic anxiety is a form of illness. It's not something you bring on yourself by how you feel on any given day. It isn't about happiness and sadness. Anxiety doesn't care if you're happy or not, just like cancer doesn't care if you're happy.”
― Sara Barnard

“How to look after your very drunk friend
Step 1: Find her in the bathroom, slumped against the towel rack

Step 2: Ask her if she needs to be sick. Try not to get offended when she yells that she's NOT DRUNK

Step 3: Tell her it's fine when she apologises, bursts into tears and then falls asleep on your shoulder.

[...]

Step 6: Root around in her front pocket for her keys. Make a joke about inappropriate touching. Laugh when she earnestly tells you that you could touch her anywhere, because nothing's inappropriate when you're best friends.

Step 7: Write it down so you can mock her with it tomorrow, and for the rest of time.

Step 8: Tell her mother that yes, you both had a great time. Pour two glasses of water, carry them both up the stairs (Make her go first, so you can catch her if she trips)”
― sara barnard

“I decide this is just A Bad Day. We all get them, because grief doesn't care how many years it's been.”
― Sara Barnard

“Little victories are everything in a world where worst-case scenarios are on an endless loop in your head”
― Sara Barnard

“Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously. A lot of the time people thing they're all the same thing, but that's just not true. Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are.

Lots of people are shy. Shy is normal. A bit of anxiety is normal. Throw the two together, add some brain-signal error - a NO ENTRY sign on the neural highway from my brain to my mouth perhaps, though no one really knows - and you have me.”
― Sara Barnard

“This is what happens when you come out of your shell. You get rocks thrown at you by the universe.”
― Sara Barnard

“Some people thrive on conflict. They enjoy the drama. I felt like I was being held underwater.”
― Sara Barnard

“People in pain can be very self-destructive. And sometimes they pull in the people who are close to them, often without realizing.”
― Sara Barnard

“Someone like you is brilliant and amazing.' I said. 'Why can't you see that in yourself?' The unfairness of it was starting to sink in. If she could only see herself like I did, there wouldn't be a problem. But she didn't, and she never would, and that was so many levels of wrong and unfair I almost couldn't comprehend it.”
― Sara Barnard