We Are Not Ourselves Quotes

“You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Sometimes, she thought, life makes you grow up early. And some people never grow up at all.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“So much of life was the peeling away of illusions.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“When life seems too cruel, and there seems too little love in it. When you feel you have failed. When you don't know what the point is. When you cannot go on. I want you to draw strength from me then. I want you to remember how much I cherished you, how I lived for you. When the world seems full of giants who dwarf you, when it feels like a struggle just to keep your head up, I want you to remember there is more to live for than mere achievement. It is worth something to be a good man. It cannot be worth nothing to do the right thing.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Life is going to give you things to be angry at. I don’t want you to be consumed by that anger or forget how much you’re capable of.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“She wanted a man whose trunk was thick but whose bark was thin, who flowered beautifully, even if only for her.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“When I am gone, I want you to hear my voice in your head. Hear it when you most need to, when you feel most hopeless, when you feel most alone. When life seems too cruel, and there seems too little love in it. When you feel you have failed. When you don’t know what the point is. When you cannot go on. I want you to draw strength from me then. I want you to remember how much I cherished you, how I lived for you. When the world seems full of giants who dwarf you, when it feels like a struggle just to keep your head up, I want you to remember there is more to live for than mere achievement. It is worth something to be a good man. It cannot be worth nothing to do the right thing.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Then he quoted from a French Jesuit named Teilhard de Chardin: “He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“The point wasn’t always to do what you want. The point was to do what you did and to do it well.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“He wanted, one day, to be a person who went out of his way to find out what made other people happy.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Life, she thought, was like that sometimes; for years, things were a certain way, and then in an instant, almost without conscious thought, they weren’t that way any longer, as if all the hidden pressure on their having been the way they’d been had found release through a necessary valve.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body. —King Lear”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“She wondered if she'd taken the first step on the road away from her dreams. What scared her was how easy it had been to do it.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“This was life; you went down with the ship. Who was to say that wasn't a love story?”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Negative thoughts back you into a corner,” her mother said to her, smiling, one afternoon after returning from a picnic with the baby in Flushing Meadow Park. “They multiply and surround you. Don’t think of what you don’t have. Try to focus on the simple pleasures.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“It was time now to be smart–smart and strong. She wondered whether she'd ever have a chance to be foolish and weak.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Sometimes he thought his real goal wasn't to teach them to write better essays but to get them to think more about what it meant to be human.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“The little sedimentary deposits of his need had piled at her feet until they blocked her view of him.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Don’t ever love anyone,” her mother said, picking the papers up and sliding them into the bureau drawer she’d kept her ring in. “All you’ll do is break your own heart.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“Negative thoughts back you into a corner. They multiply and surround you. Don't think of what you don't have. Try to focus on the simple pleasures.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“For now, while he breathed and moved, while he felt and thought, there was still, between this moment and the one of his dying, the interval allotted to him, and there was so much to live for in it . . .”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“He was smarter than most, more sensitive. In that regard he was more prepared for the loneliness of senescence than she was. He'd been a stranger in the world for most of his life.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“You are not in this life to count up victories and defeats. You are in it to love and be loved. You are loved with your head down. You will be loved whether you finish or not.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“The fact that they were there, that everything they owned wasn’t enough somehow, disturbed her, suggesting a bottomlessness to certain kinds of unhappiness. She”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“The real world was so messy, the light imperfect, the paint chipped, the happiness only partial.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“When the world seems full of giants who dwarf you, when it feels like a struggle just to keep your head up, I want you to remember there is more to live for than mere achievement. It is worth something to be a good man. It cannot be worth nothing to do the right thing.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“what was rational about a midlife crisis? Weren’t they always a little absurd? They were beginning the next phase of their lives together. She was not afraid of it. Let it come, she thought. He’ll be in good hands.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“A stronger deterrent to infidelity even than love was the desire to maintain a stable household, a stress-free life.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves

“The kids who thought of snappy things on the spot never had to worry about being fat or smart or pussies. You had to have a little meanness in you to do it. You had to be willing to embarrass other people sometimes.”
― Matthew Thomas, We Are Not Ourselves