The Places I've Cried in Public Quotes

“Abuse is also when your personality is attacked, not just your body. Abuse is feeling like you constantly have to walk on eggshells around the person you're supposed to love. Abuse is being cut off from your friends, even if you could never prove it was their idea you did it. Abuse is being made to feel you're going crazy. Abuse is being lured in with grand promises and wild declarations of love that can never be sustained. Abuse is being pushed into doing sexual things you're not comfortable with. That is also called rape, another word that has taken me some time to feel belongs to me. Abuse is intentionally humiliating you. Abuse is constantly blaming you for everything, and never them.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Crying is a very obvious sign that something isn’t going right in your life. You should not ignore tears.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“What is love?
Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's not what we've been told it its. Maybe it's boring words like security and safety, warmth and growth. Maybe it's the comfort of knowing someone really well and them knowing you back. Maybe it's kisses where you sometimes bump noses but you can laugh it off? Maybe it's never getting butterflies because you always know where you stand?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Sometimes that's all you can do in life, when it comes to pain - try and understand it. We all carry scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories - we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can't make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we're finding it so impossible to get over. You can't force pain to leave until it's ready to.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“It’s such a simple torture – the silent treatment. As basic as tripping someone over or pulling their chair out before they sit down. And yet it’s so very effective. When someone has the willpower to pretend you’re not there, it nullifies you. How do you fight against that humiliation?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Trauma is trauma. Your brain and body don't differentiate between physical and emotional abuse. They only respond to attack.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“You never know if happy memories are going to become sad ones. They glow and shine in the vast realms of our subconscious, making that part of our brain feel like it’s filled with glitter. We pick them up and cradle them like expensive cats, or wriggle into them like they are jumpers we’ve left to warm on a radiator. Until the day when, for one reason or another, life can suddenly make this happy memory into a sad memory instead. Good memories exist in the naivety of not knowing any better.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“It takes guts to listen to our gut...”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“I wonder how many times in a given second girls are told that their guts are wrong? Told our tummies are misfiring, like wayward fireworks. No, no, no, dear, it’s not like that at all. Where did you get that from? I promise you that’s not the case. You are overreacting. You are crazy. You are insecure. You are being a silly little thing. And, then, days or weeks or even years later, we look back on The Bad Thing that happened to us because we ignored all the signs, and we say to ourselves I wish I had listened to my gut.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“What's more painful - torturing yourself with happy memories or torturing yourself with bad ones?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Is any broken heart ever worth it?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“It was true at the time. But time changes the truth.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“I've used up so many tears on you already, and it's not helping me get over this any better”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Good memories exist in the naivety of not knowing any better.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“There are so many memories, lurking in all the spaces of everywhere. They lie trapped like frozen ghosts, existing only when someone who knows of that memory thinks about that particular time and place and their mind reactivates it. We walk through these ghosts all the time, not knowing we tread the footprints of another person’s story. Just one bench on top of a viewpoint could be harbouring so many stories. It could be the bench where a couple broke up, or where another couple had their first kiss. It could be the bench where someone thought about taking their own life, or where they got the phone call that something amazing had happened. Layered in just one bench there’s an infinite amount of memories. Multiple people living near one particular bench could all share it as special without even knowing each other. We leave behind echoes of our lives everywhere we go, trapping them into the fabric of the world around us.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“A mess. That's what I was, at this lonely number thirty-seven bus-stop.
And here I am, still a mess.
A mess with no messages on her phone. Let alone a message with three kisses.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Alfie was consistent, and, because of that, I wasn't crazy. I was calm, I was chill - I was all the things you wanted me to be, Reese. But I was incapable of being those things with you. The more you wanted me to be that "chill" girl - the more you made it clear that your love for me depended on it - the less chill and more crazy I got. Because you weren't consistent.

One day you’d be all over me, making my anxiety disappear, being kind and considerate and amazing and everything I’d always wanted. “God I love you, I love you so much,” you’d tell everyone at the lunch table, and the rest of the band would groan while I glowed. But then, later that afternoon, we’d walk past a girl and you’d say, “Wow, she’s so pretty,” then get in a mood with me if I dared to be upset.

I’m starting to realize that craziness may not always come from within. I’m starting to think lows aren’t worth the highs - not in love. Not in something where the most important thing is to feel safe. Consistency is underrated.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Guts and hearts aren’t always the most compatible - I’m starting to learn that. They pull in different directions, ignoring one another when they really shouldn’t.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“I mean, he’s a YORKSHIREMAN. There isn’t any problem that can’t be solved by pretending it doesn’t exist and having a cup of tea.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“I was relaxed and happy and attractive because you were treating me well, I was chilled out because I trusted you to do and say the things you said you were going to do. I was happy because I felt like you loved me for exactly who I was and didn't need to hide any parts of myself in order to win affection. I was attractive because I felt attractive, because I wasn't being ignored or undermined or put down or made to feel that, whatever I did, it was never enough. If only YOU would go back the way YOU were, then I could easily go back the way I was. I swear it's not all on me. I swear, I swear.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“His total lack of emotion only made me more emotional.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Here's what I know I should do:
Feel nothing.
Tell you to fuck off
Proceed to fuck off”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Sometimes that's all you can do in life, when it comes to pain - try and understand it.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Maybe with enough time passed, pain can be something that you remember fondly because you're so sure that particular pain has healed.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“Only time knows if this is a mistake, if we are worth the risk we're about to take.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“LEAVE ME FOR HER! OH I WAS SO FREAKING CRAZY, WASN'T I? FOR ACCURATELY GUESSING WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON THE WHOLE DAMN TIME? CRAZY, CRAZY AMELIE, WITH HER TOTALLY NORMAL GRIP ON REALITY!!!”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“LEAVE ME FOR HER! OH I WAS SO FREAKING CRAZY, WASN'T I? FOR ACCURATELY GUESSING WHAT THE HELL WAS GOIUNG ON THE WHOLE DAMN TIME? CRAZY, CRAZY AMELIE, WITH HER TOTALLY NORMAL GRIP ON REALITY!!!”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“I wonder if the salt from our tears is still in the concrete, crystallized beneath my feet? if there are traces of it remaining underneath my shoes?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“if you can't really remember it. does that make it less real?”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public

“you don't need dramatic settings to experience dramatic emotions.”
― Holly Bourne, The Places I've Cried in Public