The collection / 35 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1976 AD

Now that he's gone, I feel like I'm a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone. And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much as I believed in him. The shame is overwhelming.

Emma Forrest / quote

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02c. 1976 AD

People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well.

Emma Forrest / quote

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03c. 1976 AD

It's only a heartache. It isn't a tragedy. A tragedy would be losing the father of my children to cancer. This I wrestle with the hardest. There are thirty-one flavors of pain, like Baskin Robbins in hell. Am I allowed to feel pain at a breakup? When there is so much other shit going on in this world? Love is extremely serious. I don't think this is trivial.

Emma Forrest / quote

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04c. 1976 AD

It's like he has emotional amnesia... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin." Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now.

Emma Forrest / quote

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05c. 1976 AD

You want to know, but are afraid to ask, whether or not I found someone. If there could be anyone to fill that hole in my heart after I lost him. I did. "Life is futile," says my new therapist, Michaela, "and no one gets out of it alive. There is only love.

Emma Forrest / quote

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06c. 1976 AD

I finally accept that not only do I not understand the death of my relationship, but I do not need to. These men were good and kind to me, they loved me and I loved them back and the shock at the finish holds no wisdom. The revelation is not that I lost them, but that I had them.

Emma Forrest / quote

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07c. 1976 AD

When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the whole time.

Emma Forrest / quote

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08c. 1976 AD

You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, "Aren't you glad you had the experience anyway?" And you may say "No." Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered it all. You'll recall all the places you visited, but not how you got there. You'll remember the songs that you listened to.

Emma Forrest / quote

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09c. 1976 AD

Let me tell you something: when you dance, you are the greatest dancer who has ever lived. And when you sing, you will have the courage to raise your voice to the heavens, knowing that you may never get an answer.

Emma Forrest / quote

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10c. 1976 AD

You could be together forever, but one of you is going to have to go first. I want it to last. I love him and I want it to stay.

Emma Forrest / quote

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11c. 1976 AD

And then, with the feather-green darkness pressed against the windows, he puts his filthy fingers on my scrubbed hope face and says, "If I kiss you, it's all over." And then he does. And then it is.

Emma Forrest / quote

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