Death Valley Quotes

“This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“If I’m honest, I came to escape a feeling—an attempt that’s already going poorly, because unfortunately I’ve brought myself with me, and I see, as the last pink light creeps out to infinity, that I am still the kind of person who makes another person’s coma all about me.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“It is easier to have an intimate relationship with the unconscious than the conscious, the dead than the living.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“People are such a commitment. I would "reach out" more often if everyone promised not to check in again later.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“It’s always the people you don’t want to be there for you who are there for you.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I came to the desert because I wanted to be alone. Now that I’m alone, it’s not what I want.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“You're going to die one day. Then what do I do? In a way, it's like you're already gone. I have to prepare."
"If that's the case, why love anyone? Everyone is going to die at some point."
"Exactly! It's like two ghosts trying to cuddle each other. Dust cuddling dust.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“We have seen twenty-seven doctors in nine years. People believe doctors know everything. I used to believe this. It's a very lonely feeling when the doctors can't do anything. You're calling out for help in viscid darkness, and all you get back is an echo.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“My father the grown-up, my father the child. We are falling into the sunset. Falling into the night sky. Maybe the night sky is kind. Forgiving. We have both been forgiven a thousand times. Being human, always new things to forgive. Forgive me, father. You are already forgiven. Forgive me, daughter. There’s nothing to forgive.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“No perfect words. No words at all. How strange that there is nothing I can say to make him love me more. Nothing I can say to make him love me less.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“If I saw no humour in my unraveling, I'd have been dead long ago.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“It’s me who needs the mustache.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Whenever I try to emotionally connect with my mother, she acts like I’m crazy to think she has feelings to express. It makes me self-conscious of my own sensitivity, like anything resembling a feeling is dramatic, frivolous, unnecessary.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Sometimes when a person who loves me expresses care, I feel oppressed.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I'm perfectly content to eat by myself in public, so long as the restaurant is crowded. There's solitude in a crowd.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“How can I want my husband when he’s always right there? To want what you have. It’s like a puzzle. But people seem to do it all the time.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I want to be stupid and brave. I think I have the stupid part down.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“(what is intimacy if not the ebb of excitement?).”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Love the unbecoming!” says the rose. “Love the becoming something else. Don’t fear the unbecoming. Turn, turn, turn, and all that.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Some path. Some path in some desert in some life. And this is the part of the life where I am lost in the desert. But the world is round and covered in oceans. So why am I here? I’m here because I put myself here. Or because I was put here? Because I am supposed to be here? Because New Age jargon. Because my father. Because illness. Because my husband. Because avoidance.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I must now think like a lost person. I have to view the world through a lost person’s eyes. I have to make preparations.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“The cactus laughs in silence. Unlike the rocks, I have no voice for it.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I know I miss a lot of life by being on my phone all the time (that’s the point). But out here in nature, I feel bad about not paying attention. I decide that for the rest of the hike, I will not use the Internet or text with anyone. I’m only allowed to use my phone as a notepad to record what I see around me. I am going to notice things.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“The next book I read was a novel, described as the tale of a woman “unraveling” after the death of her wife. All I could think was, Who unravels this neatly? There was no mention of fear. Zero messes or catharses. If a feeling did surface, it was an elegant dribble, pristine, assonant. Was this really the inside of a person’s head? I’ve been more unraveled by a yeast infection.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“It's brave of us to die! I know we have no choice, but that doesn’t make it any less brave. How tenderly I feel for all of us when I think of this. It makes me want to give up gossiping forever. If I get out of the desert alive, I’ll do my best.
How do you do it, Dad? How do you die?
He doesn’t know either.
I have watched him at funerals. It seemed far off, that he would. Die. Later, later, there would be time for that later. He was immunized by time. And if he was immune, then I was extra immune. Graveside, we stood there like winners. And the one in the ground had lost. But the win was temporary, and the time was speeding up. Everybody into the ground. Everybody already in the ground.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I am going to crumble,” she says. “But then I’ll become something else. I’m going to become a part of everything: rocks and reptiles and pinyon pines and spiders and seeds and creosote bushes and fire and rabbits and cactus flowers and bighorn sheep and even rain. There’s beauty and youth for me yet.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Not alone. But all the while between us a great divide. How did you do it? How did you stay kind?”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“Please help me to see him as You do.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“It keeps going," I say. "And also, it will end." "And also?" says the rose. That's just it. What's so frightening about existing. It keeps going and also it will end. If I could define my terror of life, dying, loving, and all of it. If I could say "This is what it is", I'd say "It keeps going. It keeps going and also it will end." "And also?" says the rose. "And also," I say slowly. "It keeps going?”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley