The Room by the Lake Quotes

“There is nothing more dangerous than self-diagnosis”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“My thoughts have become treacherous, double agents whose loyalties remain a permanent mystery,”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“I’m worried that I haven’t said a lot of this very well, and that we don’t have enough time for me to tell you everything properly. I’ll forget what I have and haven’t told you in between sessions, you’ll forget things because I talk too fast, I’ll forget important details because I assume you know them, and you won’t understand me because of that. I’ve never tried to make this make sense to someone else before.”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“I wish I were the kind of person who found uncertainty thrilling. My life to date would have been a lot more interesting for it. I might have gone outside the lines more.”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“People living on top of one another, consuming everything, producing nothing, their minds fogged by artificial desires and artificial struggles, obstacles created and perpetuated by their environment. There's so little hope out there.”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“Everybody thinks they're capable of so much less than they are”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“Don't put your pain down beside another's and allow their shadow to make it small. Your pain matters”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“Christmas 2010, when he landed me in the ER with twelve stitches, that's when I finally got out. He'd never hit me before, if you can believe that. Wish he had, because then you can look at yourself in the mirror and see the proof. My bruises were all in my head, in my soul, and that makes them easy to ignore”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“Tyra has probably never worn sunblock in her life. She looks like she applies baby oil to sunbathe and comes away bronze all over, the kind of golden glow I never see back home. We look like members of two entirely different species: her long-limbed and effortlessly cool in shorts, me pale and puffy in black jeans that only magnify the heat, encasing my lower body like tin foil around an oven-roasted joint”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“In this lonely five days in New York I've been as low and high as I ever have, miserable and exhilarated, drunk on freedom and fear and the city's collective, propulsive desire for more. In these streets where anger hums in the air, where cars keep driving straight towards you as you cross on a corner, where there's no real expectation that you're safe. Here, I can imagine dying, or else living forever”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“It's not rush hour but the subway is still full, horizontal sardines packed together from Penn Station onwards, and I wonder whether anyone on board can tell that I have no destination. Here for the ride.”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“You had nightmares during the day?’‘Flashbacks, maybe. It’s like a daydream, only I’m not aware of anything around me, impossible to wake up. It’s like a wall got broken down in my head. Things that should be separate started bleeding into each”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake

“But such subtle things that you could basically read it into any normal person’s behaviour – mild depression, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue. All of which I had, by the way.’‘What were the more specific signs?’‘There was one that always stuck in my mind. It was a bit like a Rorschach blot, only with words. The person was asked to name the similarities between an apple and a banana. A healthy person would say they were both fruit, but in people prone to psychosis, they wouldn’t say the obvious . They’d say something like “They both have skin”.”
― Emma Dibdin, The Room by the Lake