Numbness Quotes

• There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it.

  Douglas Coupland

  Feelings, World, Laziness

  Douglas Coupland (2011). “The Gum Thief: A Novel”, p.208, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk.

  John Keats

  Pain, Heart, Sadness

  'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 1

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• Your numbness is something perhaps you cannot help. It is what the world has done to you. But your coldness. That is what you do to the world.

  Lorrie Moore

  Done, World, Helping

  FaceBook post by Lorrie Moore from Oct 29, 2012

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• And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying face of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman.

  Ray Bradbury

  Silly, Men, Emotional

  Ray Bradbury (2015). “Ray Bradbury 3-Book Collection: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man”, p.48, HarperCollins UK

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• How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Nice, Inspire

  Kurt Vonnegut (1988). “Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut”, p.140, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• He'd been numb a long time, years. All his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb at the cold sweating center of every drug deal. But now he'd found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It's the meat talking, ignore it.

  William Gibson

  Night, Talking, Years

  William Gibson (2000). “Neuromancer”, p.130, Penguin

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• The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Waiting, Leaving, Half

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• I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.

  Raymond Chandler

  Stars, Space, Emptiness

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.252, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• I am nothing. I’m like someone who’s been thrown into the ocean at night, floating all alone. I reach out, but no one is there. I call out, but no one answers. I have no connection to anything.

  Haruki Murakami

  Ocean, Night, Connections

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 09, 2013

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• I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming despair - dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It's like there's something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months. (81)

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Wish, Despair, Void

  FaceBook post by Kay Redfield Jamison from Oct 29, 2012

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• Until the bitter end, the emptiness inside her was hers alone.

  Haruki Murakami

  Emptiness, Bitter, Detachment

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Kafka On The Shore”, p.426, Random House

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• Pain is always preferable to numbness.

  Scott Anderson

  Pain, Emptiness, Detachment

  Scott Anderson (1999). “Triage: A Novel”, p.179, Simon and Schuster

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• I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

  Haruki Murakami

  Together Again, Feelings, Sputnik

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Sep 16, 2014

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• I want to care, but I don't. I look at you and all I feel is tired. I walk through school and all I want to do is leave. I wake up in the morning and don't know why I'm here. I feel like I'm not real.

  Elizabeth Scott

  Morning, Real, Tired

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• I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Life, Depressing, Real

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.390, Penguin UK

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• How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

  Ray Bradbury

  Emptiness, Detachment, Empty

  Ray Bradbury (2015). “Ray Bradbury 3-Book Collection: Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man”, p.48, HarperCollins UK

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• She’s never where she is,' I said. 'She’s only inside her head.

  Janet Fitch

  Emptiness, Detachment, Said

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.145, Hachette UK

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• There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Pain, Grief, Feelings

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• I'm something that I used to be. I'm never where I feel I am, and if I seek myself, I don't know who's seeking me. My boredom with everything has numbed me. I feel banished from my soul.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Boredom, Soul, Emptiness

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.172, Penguin UK

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• I lay and cried, and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before; how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate; and damn, I'd better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer to NOT feel, NOT to let the world touch one.

  Sylvia Plath

  Character, Fate, World

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.64, Anchor

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• My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.

  Henry Rollins

  Moving, Inspiration, Hands

  Henry Rollins (2005). “Roomanitarian”, 2.13.61

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• Nobody believes the identities we've made for ourselves. I feel like everybody in the world is fake now - as though people had true cores once, but hucked them away and replaced them with something more attractive but also hollow.

  Douglas Coupland

  Believe, People, Fake

  "Girlfriend in a Coma". Book by Douglas Coupland, 1998.

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• This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?

  Anna Kamienska

  Morning, Thinking, Emptiness

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• There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you're supposed to do, but in fact you're not there at all.

  Frederick Barthelme

  Over You, Feelings, Facts

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• You've faced horrors in these past weeks... I don't know which is worse. The terror you feel the first time you witness such things, or the numbness that comes after it starts to become ordinary.

  Tasha Alexander

  Past, Ordinary, Firsts

  Tasha Alexander (2013). “A Fatal Waltz”, p.163, Hachette UK

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