Notes From Exile Quotes

“Humans and their obsession with chasing what's not meant for them... it’s the classic tragedy isn't it?

We think you know something God doesn't.

We think if we suffer enough, the universe will finally owe us a prize. We’re just romantics in a world that prefers accountants.

We like to wake up and say, 'I almost had it.' No, you didn't. You were never even close.

So cheers to the god damn fools who dream.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I'll tell you the absolute worst thing about grief.

It's waking up in the morning, and for one split second, you forget.

Your mind is clear. And then... bam. It hits you all over again.You start realizing that no matter how many years roll by, those absences... they don't ever get smaller.

You just get a hell of a lot better at carrying the weight.
It's a heavy load.

You start missing old versions of people, of moments, and even of yourself that's just gone.

And it ain't ever gonna exist the same way again.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Look, we all like to think we have our shit together.

You start to think you've seen it all.

You got your armor on, your guard up, and you know exactly what's waiting around the next corner.

Until the collision......

We all eventually meet that one women we just weren't prepared for.

You aren't ready for the way she looks at you. You aren't ready for the things she make you crave.

And suddenly, all those walls you built don't mean a damn thing.

But heaven help you, you buy the ticket and take the ride anyway.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Nothing you will become could ever disappoint me.

I don't have some grand, tragic preconception of what I want you to be or do.

I have absolutely no desire to try and foresee your next move!

That ain't my style.

My only plan is to stick around and discover you.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“So, somebody asked me the other day what’s my type is, right?

I actually prefer to be a little intellectually intimidated by the woman I love….

I want her sharp. I want her cunning. I want to look at her across the room and think, she is out of my league in ways I don't even understand yet.

I want to look into her eyes and feel utterly outmatched.

The kind of intellect that strips you bare, leaves you bleeding in the poetry of your own fucking ignorance.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The shrinks will tell you obsessions are curable.

You dry out, you get clean, you take up meditation, and you learn to sit quietly in a room.

But let’s be honest. People built like us don't get ‘cured.'

You drop one obsession and you violently latch onto the next!

From politics to whiskey to the absolute, terrifying pursuit of the Truth!

You swing from madness to madness, because the alternative is a slow, agonizing death by boredom!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I have spent half of my life trying to play the good guy.

You know

Less loud. Less blunt.

Less chaotic, less of an emotional trainwreck, biting my own tongue so I don’t scare the civilians.

But love isn’t supposed to be a fucking censorship board. If you have to carve out my own wild, blunt, broken heart just to fit into their neat little box of 'easy to love,'

It ain't worth the squeeze.

Love is the riot. It is the storm.

and I am officially done apologizing for the noise.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Its strange how easy it is to vanish from someone’s story….

Just Yesterday, you were the main character in the god damn novel of her life.

And Today? You're an Fucking extra.

A typo.

That the absolute cruelty of the human mind.....

You have zero say in who keeps your memorioes in the velvet box, and who leaves them to rot”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Love! It’s a cheap, over-the-counter narcotic peddled by greeting card salesmen and Hollywood hacks!

Any fool can love the smiling, sanitized plastic version you present to the world!

But to be understood?

That is an absolute, holy grail

To be able to find a fellow soul who actually sees the hideous, trembling truths, the scars you hide in the basement of your soul.

That is the only high worth chasing in this doomed world!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I dont trust anyone who claims they don’t talk to themselves.....

I immediately assume you’re either lying or a f*cking serial killer.

What do you mean your brain is just... quiet?

You mean to tell me you don’t pace in your room dead in the night rehearsing what you shoulda said in an argument three days ago?

I mean, I’ve won a hundred fights in my mind just walking down to the general store for a pack of gum.

If you aren't rehearsing your legal defense in the shower, you are entirely unprepared for the savage realities of this world man!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Some kids never get to be children at all

They’re born into a warzone of someone else's making. They raise themselves.

They wipe their own tears and fight off the wolves themselves. Soothe their own nightmares.

And then, years later, When the dust settles,
And the world asks them what they want…

They just freeze.

Because desire... desire is a delicate flower. And nothing grows in the soil where only survival was planted.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“My love language is a a barrage of highly inappropriate dangerous questions.

I don't want the polite fiction of your day.

Because I am absolutely fascinated by the beautiful, tangled, chaotic mess inside your head.

I want to know what you think about at 3 AM when the world goes quiet and the anxiety creeps in.

So, Tell me about all the terrible, wonderful things you feel and never say out loud.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.’

What a Fucking lie!

A desperate lie to keep the masses from weeping in the streets....

When the world takes a swing at you and misses the kill shot, you do not return as a titan. You return as a ghost.

What doesn't kill you shatters the illusion. It strips the flesh from the bone. It leaves you broken.

And if you don't find a way to let that poison out, it’ll rot you from the inside.

So you write. You become the shaman of your own sorrow.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“You think intimacy is all bloody roses and holding hands in the park, do ya?

Bollocks!

You let a complicated, maddening woman into your life, and the next thing you know, your entire vocabulary is compromised.

Her cadence becomes your cadence.

It's the ultimate infiltration. Long after the meal is over, long after she is gone, you realize she has permanently altered change the way you speak. She's hijacked your syntax

But... you realize it's the only piece of 'her you've got left. And you wouldn't trade it for the world, would ya?”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“How did you get into poetry?

Look, I’d love to give you some romantic, tortured-artist bullshit about the hot muse visiting me in the dead of night, or a profound calling from the literary gods.

But I’m not gonna lie to you.

I just woke up one day, realized I possessed a crippling inability to hold down a respectable job, and figured... and I figured I had a hell of a lot to whine about.

So Writing was just a cheaper alternative to therapy, and it gave me an excuse to piss on the absurd, beautiful tragedy of the human condition …”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Here’s the tragedy of the situation, I’m too busy looking for God in all the wrong places.

I wander the shady streets, looking into the eyes of the lost or in the laugh of a strangers sharing a cheap beer.

I’m looking for salvation at the bottom of a glass & in the gutters and in the love of the hookers.

What a terrible, poetic excuse for procrastination.

He ain't here, motherf*kers…”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I get it. I really do.

We’re the bleeding-heart romantics. We’re the ones cursed with the emotional bandwidth to actually appreciate the profound, devastating beauty of a dying sunset

It Makes you human, they say. Makes you special.

Well, I’ll tell ya what the fuck it actually is. It’s a bloody liability.It’s like bringing a bouquet of roses to a knife fight.

You want to feel things deeply? Fine.
But don't come cry when you realize the world doesn't play fair with fragile things.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Being in your 30's feels like standing in the middle of 100 open doors

And every single door is a completely different life. A different woman, a different mistake,

It looks like freedom, but it’s actually a goddamn hostage situation.

I’m just standing there in the center, paralyzed,

Because I know the second I step through one of them,

I have to listen to the other ninety-nine slam shut forever. So I better stay in the fucking hallway.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I want to read every goddamn book ever written.

I want to watch every movie, travel to every forgotten corner of the map,

I want to love every beautiful, complicated woman on this earth.

But you can’t. Because one life is just unfairly, criminally small.

So what do you do?

You just try to drink the ocean through a straw,
and hope you don't drown.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The strangest, most heartbreaking part about nostalgia is that the moments that actually haunt you felt completely ordinary when you were living them.

It’s just driving to the grocery store with the windows down.

It’s her burning the toast on a Tuesday morning and laughing about it.

While you were living it, it was just another boring Tuesday. You had no idea that you were standing right in the middle of a masterpiece.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“How paradoxical of her to understand and misunderstand me at the same time. It drives me mad.

I am inside her head, but I am utterly incapable of being in her life.

We are best friends in the gutter and total strangers in the light.

It’s the closest I’ve ever been to anyone, honestly
I feel like I’m yelling at her from the moon.

Nobody has ever felt so close yet distant.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Funny of you to never know which moments become core memories.

You spend your whole life trying to orchestrate these perfect, cinematic moments.

The kiss in the rain. The grand gesture.
But then... it’ll be a random Tuesday.

You’re just sitting on the floor eating cold takeout, and she laughs at something stupid you said with her mouth full.

And you don’t know it yet, but you are going to be thinking about that exact laugh on your deathbed.

It's beautiful, but... it is a ruthless trick of the mind.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Some people don’t offer advice, they offer presence, and somehow that heals more.

The last thing you need is a lecture. I don't need a roadmap. I need a witness.

The friend who meets you at the bar at 2 AM and doesn't say a goddamn word about your mistakes.
Just slide a beer across the wood and sit there.

That’s the only medicine that works on a soul like mine.

Don't fix me. Just have a beer with me while I'm broken.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There is something freeing about being a little difficult to define.

When people ask you the inevitable, boring question—'So, what do you do?’

and you don't have a neat sentence ready,

You are no longer a noun; you are a verb.

You are moving, eating, grieving, seeing.

You’re too F*CKING loud, too F*CKING broken.

You are a collection of scars and stories that don't fit on a business card.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“The way i distance myself from people is probably the most scariest violent parts about me...

I guess....I could love you to fucking death until the stars burn out and the sea turns to dust,

And yet never utter a single word in your direction. It’s a F*cking terrible paradox.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“There must be something hauntingly beautiful about people who leave first

But I wouldn't know, I'm usually the poor bastard left standing in the driveway watching the taillights fade.

But you have to admire the poetry of it

The preemptive strike. Slipping out the door while the bed is still warm and the illusion is still intact.

They never have to stick around for the messy part. They never see the rot set in.

God... what a beautiful, cowardly way to break a heart.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Somebody asked me today if I was happy.

I had to laugh.Coz I dont have the talent or genetics for that kind of delusion...

My chemicals do not mix that way.

I'm just a sad wreck, a collision of bad habits and good intentions that just... never quite work out.

But I’m curious

I want to know why the heart breaks exactly the way it does, I watch it, I study it, I write it down”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“I am running out of dirt, people..

I've got dead dreams, dead romances, dead versions of my my ego….

it's like a massacre in my heart …

I wonder how many graves I have to dig to bury everything dead inside of me

But then again... maybe you don't bury them.

Maybe you just pull up a chair, pour a drink, and keep the ghosts company.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“Society doesn't want you happy, and it doesn't want you dead. It wants you 'Okay.'

Just functional enough to work, just sad enough to buy things to feel better.

'Okay' is the kill zone. 'Okay' is where dreams go to die slowly.”

So Do not be 'Okay'! Be rabid! Be ecstatic! Be a menace to the status quo!”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”

“If you’re too sad, you can’t work. If you’re too happy, you realize you don’t need the work.

So they keep you right there in the middle. ‘Okay.’

It’s a trap. A golden cage where nothing hurts, but nothing bleeds either.

The world wants you numb because numb people buy toaster ovens.

Screw ‘okay.’ Go get your heart broken. Go get into a fistfight. Feel something, you, numb bastard.”
― Lokesh Tuli, Notes From Exile: The "Manual for the Broken”