Normal Distance Quotes

“I don't want to feel good, I want to feel sad. Happiness lately feels mostly beside the point.

It's not that I think I deserve punishment. Just weird fleeting wishes for tragedy.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“I think delicate people are frightening. But I also think fear is erotic.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“Before we are born, we exist even less than after we die. We should tremble when we think of that time. How long until we exist so little again? The past happens fast. If there was infinite past, the sky would be nothing but starlight. “Observed darkness and nonuniformity of night” make us finite. There are few stars, moving farther apart. The past is bright, but black and white. The future is dim but in color. The past is still. The future trembles.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“All my imagined futures have turned into memories. Today, there’s more past than yesterday. But is there any less future?”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“Do our experiences belong to us? Are they a property, “like a hat”? (Wittgenstein says no.) Do you have to pay attention to your own desires, which you do not own, to be mindful? Can you not pay attention to your desires? Will attention excite or assuage my desire? (You can’t observe X without changing X.) I don’t care. I want to change my mind.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“Death by attrition. War of natural causes.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“I want to go to sleep and wake up and not be a terrible person.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“...Hope is the dark part of morning
The trees and not the sky behind
A glimmer without a color...”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“I like listening to sad music when I’m sad. It doesn’t make me feel happier per se, it just improves the quality of the sadness.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“He says, There’s no clouds, with clouds in the background. He says, There’s no trees. I say, I’m looking at a tree right now. (The squirrel’s gravesite.) You can’t just talk about the weather anymore. There’s an urge to tell someone what’s happening, but the people who care know, and the people who don’t know don’t care.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“I'll go gentle into that good night if I fucking want to.”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance

“Who am I when I sleep so deeply I wake up thinking of my childhood bed?”
― Elisa Gabbert, Normal Distance