James Frey Quotes

Long black hair and deep clean blue eyes and skin pale white and lips blood red she's small and thin and worn and damaged. She is standing there.
What are you doing here?
I was taking a walk and I saw you and I followed you.
What do you want.
I want you to stop.
I breathe hard, stare hard, tense and coiled. There is still more tree for me to destroy I want that fucking tree. She smiles and she steps towards me, toward toward toward me, and she opens he r arms and I'm breathing hard staring hard tense and coiled she puts her arms around me with one hand not he back of my head and she pulls me into her arms and she holds me and she speaks.
It's okay.
I breathe hard, close my eyes, let myself be held.
It's okay.
Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking an the Fury melts into her safety an she holds me and she says.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I always fight it and control it and stop it but her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and if she let me go right now I would fall and the need and confusion and fear and regret and horror and shame and weakness and f

Writing's not precious to me. It's not a thing that requires specific environment. You know, it's my job. Just like anybody with a job, you have to do your job when you don't feel like it, regardless of how good or bad the conditions are, regardless of how good or bad you might feel on any particular day.

I think as an artist or a writer it's OK to want to control your own work.

In 1970, a superior Court judge issues an order forcing the desegregation of Los Angeles schools. The judge survives an assassination attempt and loses his job in the next election.

What is the meaning of life?Whatever you want it to be.

I turn and I walk my tray to the conveyor and I drop it on the belt and I start to walk out of the Dining Hall. As I head through the Glass Corridor separating the men and women, I see Lilly sitting alone at a table. She looks up at me and she smiles and our eyes meet and I smile back. She looks down and I stop walking and I stare at her. She looks up and she smiles again. She is as beautiful a girl as I have ever seen. Her eyes, her lips, her teeth, her hair, her skin. The black circles beneath her eyes, the scars I can see on her wrists, the ridiculous clothes she wears that are ten sizes too big, the sense of sadness and pain she wears that is even bigger. I stand and I stare at her, just stare stare stare. Men walk past me and other women look at me and LIlly doesn't understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing it and she's blushing and it's beautiful. I stand there and I stare. I stare because I know where I am going I'm not going to see any beauty. They don't sell crack in Mansions or fancy Department Stores and you don't go to luxury Hotels or Country Clubs to smoke it. Strong, cheap liquor isn't served in five-star Restaurants or Champagne Bars and it isn't sold in gourmet Groceries or boutique Liquor stores. I'm going to go to a horrible place in a horrible neighborhood run by horrible people providing product for the worst Society has to offer. There will be no beauty there, nothing even resembling beauty. There will be Dealers and Addicts and Criminals and Whores and

She is becoming what I wanted she the last with the Arctic eyes to become, which is someone who loves me. Simply and truly as I am. It is hard to stare at her because I know she is starting to love me, I am starting to love her back. I don't care what she's done or who she's done it with, I don't care about whatever demons may be in her closet. I care about how she makes me feel and she makes me feel strong and safe and calm and warm and true. It is hard to stare because I am forced to contemplate giving it up. It is hard to stare, but I do it anyway.

Light streamed through one of the windows and across her face and I have never seen anything or anyone so beautiful in my life. If my heart had stopped at that moment I would have fallen happy and fallen full and I would have seen in life all that I had wanted to see and all that I needed to see. Fall. Let me fall.

I dont want to make friends here.
Why?
I don't like goodbyes.

Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?

To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me.

Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There's publishing, touring, marketing, web presence.

There are never words for the strongest of our feelings. There is just the pain that we cannot share. Pain we must all feel alone.

That's how life works. You know it when you know it.
They're nineteen and in love. Alone except for each other. Jobless and homeless, looking for something, somewhere, anywhere here.
They're on a sixteen-line highway.
Driving west.

And even though people try to pretend that pain doesn't do anything to them, none of us can really handle it. Everything bad we do in our life is because of pain of some kind.

She made me feel better than I have ever felt, better than I imagined I could feel, and it scared me, it scared me to the point of paralysis.

I reach up and out and I put my arms around Leonard and I hug him. I don't know any words, so I let my actions speak. Strong, simple and deep appreciation. The actions speak true.

I look at pastries and cakes, tarts and pies. My body craves sugar, always craves sugar. Years of alcohalism and the high level of sugar in alcohal created the craving, which I feed with candy and soda.

He tells me I look as if I could use a hugand i laugh at him and he ignores me and steps forward and puts his arms around me and hugs me. I warm at the simple pleasure of human contact and for the first time in a long time i actually feel good. (James Frey, pg.38)

The future is unwritten. What will be will be.

Why are you scared, John?'
'Because I know I'm not better.'
'Why do you think that?'
'Because I know it in my heart.

There is a publication classification in an upper corner. It reads Religion. I'm immediately skeptical < ... > because I've always group books such as this in a category with crap like Astrology, Aromatherapy, Crystalology, Pyramid Power, Psychic Healing and Feng Shui < ... > that anyone would actually believe that these things could solve their problems, really solve them, instead of just making them forget about them for a while, is asinine to me ...

Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests.
Why?
You tell me.
I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.

I have a great amount of confidence and faith in my abilities to write. There are other areas of my life where I'm not as confident, and have not as much faith, but when it comes down to writing and working, I don't worry about it. I trust myself to get it right.

I sit and I listen to John cry and I wish there was something I could do to help him. I sit and I listen and I wish there was some way I could make it better. There is no hope for John, no hope at all. He could go to five hundred Clinics and spend ten years working the Twelve Steps and it wouldn't make a bit of fucking difference. He has been broken beyond repair, wounded beyond the point of healing, abused beyond the point of recovery. He will never know happiness or joy, security, or normalcy. He will never know pleasure, satisfaction, serenity, clarity, peace of mind or any semblance of sanity. He will never know or trust love. You poor, sick, sad Motherfucker. You will never know. I'm sorry.

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

On the left side of my cheek a row of crusted scabbed stitches hold a deep 1 inch-long gash together. My nose is bent and swollen beneath its bandage and red lines streak from my nostrils. There are black and yellow bruises beneath both eyes, there is blood both wet and dry everywhere. (James Frey)

I can feel blood dripping from the wounds on my face and I can feel my heart beating and I can feel the weight of my life beginning to drop and I realize why dawn is called mourning.

The afternoon and the early evening slide by in a lidded daze where the ability to think in any identifiable way disappears and where every moment seems to be an eternity.

You can tell yourself anything you want, but until you believe what you're telling yourself, you're wasting words.

Love only brought me lonliness and horror.

Thank you Lilly, Leonard, MIles, I love you and I thank you

1954. Smog prevents airplanes from landing and ships from docking for three days.

Los Angeles is a lonely city. Everyone is focused on advancement success fame and money, it is hard to adjust to a culture based on always wanting more, on never being satisfied.

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be.

There is no Higher Power or any God who is responsible for what I do and for what I have done and for who I am. There is no Higher Power or any God who will cure me. There is no Meeting where any amount of whining, complaining and blaming is going to make me feel any better.

It started when she passed me a note in English class. The note said you don't seem as awful as I hear you are. I passed one back that read: beware I am as awful as people say and worse. She laughed and I had a friend. She didn't become my Ally and I didn't ask her to or want her to but she became my friend and that was more than anyone else was willing to do.

Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.

I felt like I had lost something. But not something silly, like my keys or my gum; more like my arm or my foot, something that really mattered. Like something that I could live without, but would make life much harder if it were missing. And life is hard enough. Life is hard enough with everything we're given.

I want to run or die or get fucked up. I want to be blind and dumb and have no heart. I want to crawl in a hole and never come out. I want to wipe my existence straight off the map. Straight off the fucking map.

Thirty-six. If you want to shrink something, you must first expand it. If you want to get rid of something, you must allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must allow it to be given. The soft will overcome the hard. The slow will beat the fast. Don't tell people the way, just show them the results.

I miss everything. I miss talking to her, hearing about her day. I miss her voice all gravelly and smoky, I miss hearing her laugh, I miss getting her letters, writing her letters. I miss her eyes, and the smell of her hair, and the way her breath tasted. I fucking miss everything.

Were it up to me, I would be with Lilly. Were it up to me I would be asleep in her arms. She's dead, in a cooler in some fucking morgue, and i'll never sleep in her arms again. The thought of it makes me sick, and it makes me want to join her. The rose will help me. It is time to start the killing. Time to fucking start. (James Frey, pg.39)

It hits my arms, my legs. It burns and it hurts and I sit and I take the burn and I take the hurt. Not because I like it, because I don't. I sit and I take the pain and I ignore the pain and I forget the pain because I know that pain and suffering are different things. Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect that pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can learn to withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. I have lived a life full with suffering. I have lived a life without control. I have spent twenty-three years destroying myself and everything and everyone around me. I don't want to live that way anymore. I take the pain so that I will never suffer. I take the pain to experience control. I take the pain.

as he reads the articles he talks about the writers, most of whom he knows from his days as a fighter, and he calls the ones he doesn't agree with names like feckhead, grasshole or kicksucker.

The point of what I do is that it doesn't really matter what a book or a story is as long it moves you, informs you, challenges you, entertains you, or changes you.

There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain.

But that's part of faith. Believing and knowing despite what other people say, and despite what the world might think of your beliefs.

My life is routine. I wake up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I sit on the floor of the cell I do not go to breakfast. I stare at a gray cement wall. I keep my legs crossed my back straight my eyes forward. I take deep breaths in and out, in and out, and I try not to move. I sit for as long as I can I sit until everything hurts I sit until everything stops hurting I sit until I lose myself in the gray wall I sit until my mind becomes as blank as the gray wall. I sit and I stare and I breathe. I sit and I stare. I breathe.

I close my eyes and I let my body shut itself down and I let my mind wander. It wanders to a familiar place. A place I don't talk about or acknowledge exists. A place where there is only me. A place that I hate. I am alone. Alone here and alone in the world. Alone in my heart and alone in my mind. Alone everywhere, all the time, for as long as I can remember. Alone with my Family, alone with my friends, alone in a Room full of People. Alone when I wake, alone through each awful day, alone when I finally meet the blackness. I am alone in my horror. Alone in my horror. I don't want to be alone. I have never wanted to be alone. I fucking hate it. I hate that I have no one to talk to, I hate that I have no one to call, I hate that I have no one to hold my hand, hug me, tell me everything is going to be all right. I hate that I have no one to share my hopes and dreams with, I hate that I no longer have any hopes or dreams, I hate that I have no one to tell me to hold on, that I can find them again. I hate that when I scream, and I scream bloody murder, that I am screaming into emptiness. I hate that there is no one to hear my scream and that there is no one to help me learn how to stop screaming. . . More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to be close to someone. More than anything, all I have ever wanted is to feel as if I wasn't alone.

Words can't say this. The one word love means too little for what it is. It means everything and that is still not enough.

A small portion of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes are enshrined at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades. They are the only portion of Gandhi's remains that are kept anywhere outside of India.

The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value.

One of the beautiful and terrible things about America is you can go there and still be whatever you want, if you bust your ass and you have some luck.

Love is love. It doesn't matter how or who you love. I don't believe the messiah would condemn gay men and women.

Be strong. Live honorably and with dignity. When you don't think you can, hold on.

Everything I know and I am and I have seen felt done past present past now then before now seen felt done hurt felt focus into a something beyond words beyond beyond beyond and it speaks now and it says.
Stay.
Fight.
Live.
Take it.

Be smart, be strong, be proud, live honorably and with dignity, and just hold on.

I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.

I used to think i was tough, but then i realized i wasn't. i was fragile and i wore thick fucking armor. and i hurt people so they couldn't hurt me. and i thought that was what being tough was, but it isn't.

The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.

Its not just a smile of momentary happiness. When it disappears from my face, it will stay with me.

But we are what we are, and humans will always hate.

Whether they are accepted or not isn't important. What is important is the act of apologizing, the act of admitting fault, the act of asking for forgiveness.

The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.

L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.

Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home from work and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt that he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to come back, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work... It takes a brave man to walk away, to care so much that he doesn't care about anything else, to be willing to obey what he feels inside, to be willing to suffer the consequences of living for himself. Every time I stand before his work it makes me cry, and I cry because I'm proud of him, and happy for him, and because I admire him.

My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.

I often think of death.
True.
Suicide is a reasonable option.
True.
My sins are unpardonable.
I stare at the question.
My sins are unpardonable.
I stare at the question.
My sins are unpardonable.
I leave it blank.

The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.

I think about her. I think about the first time I saw her.. I had a book in my hand and I was reading and for some reason I looked up ... She didn't see me. She didn't see me, but I saw her.

Laughing and Love. They are both drugs.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

Darkness retreats and the Sun rises. Red, yellow and orange creep into clear blue, the sweet airborne calls of waking birds echo across the black mirror of the Lake, a crisp draft carries the bitter of cold into the reserve of night. I stand and I walk back to the Unit and dew on the dead grass soaks through my shoes and i watch my feet break the crystalline perfection of the morning's drops and the drops are just another thing I've destroyed, another thing I can't fix or bring back, another beautiful thing ruined by my carelessness. I don't stop. I don't stop destroying and don't change my course and I don't look back. Looking back hurts too much, so I just keep going.

What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.

If you want to be whole, you must first be partial.

We did what our people do all the time, we told ourselves something we did was right and we found a way to justify it, even though we knew it was wrong.

For the most profound experiences in our lives and in the world words are worth nothing. Can you describe love Or death Can you describe what it really feels like the first time you see your child Or the first time your heart gets broken You can try ... but it won't come close to describing what it really was or what it really felt like.

I am happy and able because I allow myself to be happy.

We got this gift of life and we got it one time and we gonna get hurt in it and be hurt going through it and the only thing that'll make that hurt better or hurt less is love.

I always wanted to be the outlaw. And that's to a certain extent how I've lived.

Enemies are a given. Friends are not.

In my mind my obituary is done.It is done and it is right. It tells the truth and as awful as it can be, the truth is what matters. It is what I should be remembered by, if I'm remembered at all. Remember the truth. that is all that matters

I know a bit about the loss of dignity. I know that when you take away a man's dignity there is a hole, a deep black hole filled with despair, humiliation and self-hatred, filled with emptiness, shame and disgrace, filled with loss and isolation and hell. It's a deep, dark, horrible fucking hole, and that hole is where people like me live our sad-ass, fucked-up, dignity free, inhuman lives, and where we die, alone, miserable, wasted and forgotten.

Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.

I've always said I'm more influenced in what I do by artists, and how they work, how they think, and the freedom they're given to work and think, than I really am by other writers.

It's when I'm standing six feet away from you and not being able to find the words to tell you how much I love you and how much I miss you that I want to just scream to the whole room that I'm still in love with you. It's when I'm sitting alone with the phone in my hand dialing your number and hanging up that I would trade a thousand tomorrows for just one yesterday. Then I could just call you to tell you goodnight. It's when I am really sad about something and need someone to talk to that I realize you're the only one who really knew me at all. It's when I cry myself to sleep at night and it hits me how much I would give to hold you at that very moment. It's when I think about you that I realize no one else in the world is meant for me.

In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.

Jovinderpihainu breaks it. You are right to ask, Shari. But there is a difference between being honest and being right. Honest men lie all the time, believing that they tell the truth. Much evil is borne on the back of honest

The pain is immense, but I need it because it keeps me from going insane.

I'm trying to influence the next generation or two generations or three generations behind me. That's a big ambition of mine.

They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.

If I was gonna write a book that was true, and I was gonna write a book that was honest, then I was gonna have to write about myself in very, very negative ways.

You only live once, buy Picassos whenever possible.

I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.

You want worship for what? For what you give? For how you treat us? For what you allow to happen? For the hatred that exists that you don't stop? For the violence that you don't stop? For the death that you don't stop? Man killing man killing women killing children that you don't stop. And you want worship? You want us on our knees? You want devotion? You want exaltation? You want faith? A crown of thorns pressed into the skull bleeding at the tips.

I, however, like black. It is a color that makes me comfortable and the color with which I have the most experience. In the darkest darkness, all is black. In the deepest hole, all is black. In the terror of my Addicted mind, all is black. In the empty periods of my lost memory, all is black. I like black, goddammit, and I am going to give it its due.

I think God is something that people use to avoid reality. I think faith allows people to reject what is right in front of our eyes, which is that thing, this life, this existence, this consciousness, or whatever word you want to use for it, is all we have, and all we'll ever have. I think people have faith because they want and need to believe in something, whatever that something is, because life can be hard and depressing and brutal if you don't.

I sleep during the day. I still dream about drinking and drugs. Sometimes I wake to a hang-over, sometimes I wake to a trickle of blood from my nose, sometimes I wake scared and shaking. I read, go to museums and visit Lilly in the afternoon. Sometimes I read to her, sometimes I talk to her, sometimes I just sit and remember the times, remember the times, remember the times. (James Frey, pg.119)

My life has been like all the lives, long and hard and full of sadness and confusion and horror, a frightening, difficult dream punctuated by brief moments of joy. And as is the case with all people's lives, the moments of joy are never often enough and never long enough.