Quotessence
Home / Authors / Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss

Darin Strauss Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWantCrazyFacesKnowsSeemsSelfStoriesAmerican HistoryAssumptionAwkward

Famous Darin Strauss Quotes

“Relationships are physics. Time transforms things- it has to, because the change from me to we means clearing away the fortifications you'r put up around your old personality. Living with Susannah made me feel as if I started riding Einstein's famous theoretical bus. Here's my understanding of that difficult idea, nutshelled: if you're riding a magic Greyhound, equipped for light-speed travel, you'll actually live though less time than will any pedestrians whom the bus passes by. So, for a neighbor on the street with a stopwatch, the superfast bus will take two hours to travel from Point A to Point B. But where you're on that Greyhound, and looking at the wipe of the world out those rhomboidial coach windows, the same trip will take just under twenty-four minutes. Your neighbor, stopwatch under thumb, will have aged eighty-six percent more than you have. It's hard to fathom. But I think it's exactly what adult relationships do to us: on the outside, years pass, lives change. But inside, it's just a day that repeats. You and your partner age at the same clip; it seems not time has gone by. Only when you look up from your relationship- when you step off the bus, feel the ground under your shoes- do you sense the sly, soft absurdity of romance physics.”

LoveRomanceRelationshipsPhysics
Book:Half a Life
Create image

“The part of the brain that isn't automatic is an imagining machine, feeling all possibilities of feelings: it keeps pushing its way into this marshy, pleasant terrain. You struggle against that push, and start to feel your stomach protest. It's not so much even a type of seriousness as it is a circumstance, into which you pass by slow degrees. I've never seen this sufficiently examined. It mutates into a less-unreal reality that still seems different, somehow, than being fully present. Self hate is rarely unconditional.”

ImaginationSubconscious MindSelf HateBrain Function
Book:Half a Life
Create image

“I've come to see our central nervous system as a kind of vintage switchboard, all thick foam wires and old-fashioned plugs. The circuitry isn't properly equipped; after a surplus of emotional information the system overloads, the circuit breaks, the board runs dark. That's what shock is.”

KindRunningDarkBreakInformationEmotionalNervousBoardsShockThickOld FashionedWireVintageCircuitsNervous SystemSurplusPlugsFoamOverloadCentral Nervous System
Book:Half a Life: A Memoir
Create image

“Everybody wants life to speak to them with special kindness. Every personal story begs to be steered toward reverie, toward some relief from unpleasant truths: That you are a self, that beyond anything else you want the best for that self. That, if it is to be you or someone else, you need it to be you, no matter what.”

IfsWantNeedsSelfMatterStoriesSpeakKindnessSpecialNo Matter WhatReliefBe YouReveriePersonal Stories
Book:Half a Life: A Memoir
Create image