Jill Alexander Essbaum Quotes

You leave the analyst's office aware of your singularity and your solitude alike. It's you who lives in the prison of your skin. No one gets the afterglow they want. Everyone dies alone. Analysis is a process. The process is a slow procession. It is a cortège. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

He'd taken the boys to the Hallenstadion many times to see the ZSC Lions play. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

The heart, which

isn't immune to anything, turns numb to all
others, dumb as the muscle that it is, ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna, I only know this: when it is your turn to die - my turn, anyone's - when it is time for you to let go of one life and reach out for another, you will be left with no choice but to hurl yourself willingly into the mother arms of transfiguration. It's not an end. It's a beginning. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna's spiritual formation was relegated to cultural expressions of faith: the Christmas Baby Jesus and his gifts, the Easter risen Christ and his chocolate bunnies, and a copy of The Thorn Birds pulled from her mother's bookshelf. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A LONELY WOMAN IS a dangerous woman." Doktor Messerli spoke with grave sincerity. "A lonely woman is a bored woman. Bored women act on impulse. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Let's get you one, Anna."
"A lover?"
Edith rolled her eyes. "No. A fucking houseplant. Yes, a lover." Edith smirked. "It'll cheer you up! ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Then Anna and Archie took the number 10 tram from Sternen Oerlikon, ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

At the midnight of our trouble,
there are signs in the moon and in the stars.
He will not say that he belongs to me,
and still I bend to wash his feet. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I think it's important to let each thing you write teach you how to write it. You must listen to what you do. Let it be in control. I don't step in until I know what it demands of me. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Narcissism isn't vanity, Anna. We're all narcissists to a degree. A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. You have little regard for those around you. You do what you will with a libertine's abandon. Boredom sets in. A bored woman is a dangerous woman. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Solitude was her anchor. A familiar misery, and anymore the safest, most sensible approach. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

The trouble with mistakes is that they rarely seem like mistakes when they are made. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A cock wants a hole. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

That it ought to be known I was born this way,
With indiscriminate tendencies. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

This season's promotion was a set of knives. Anna saved the stickers - Merkli - but rarely cashed them in. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Yes, you do hate Switzerland. And," doctor Messerli paused for effect, "you love it. You love it and you hate it. What you don't feel is apathy. You're not indifferent. You're ambivalent."
Anna had thought about this before, when nights came during which she could do nothing but wander Dietlikon's sleeping streets or hike the hill behind her house to sit upon the bench where most often she went to weep. She'd considered her ambivalence many, many times, and in the end, she's diagnosed herself with a disease that she'd also invented. Switzerland syndrome. Like Stockholm syndrome. But instead of my captors, I'm attached to the room in which I'm held captive. It's the prison I'm bound to, not the warden.

Anna was absolutely right. It was the landscape. it was the geography. The fields, the streams, the lakes, the forests. And the mountains. On exceptionally clear days when the weather was right, if you walked south on Dietlikon's Bahnhofstrasse you could see the crisp outlines of snow-capped Alps against a blazing blue horizon eighty kilometers away. On these certain days it was something in the magic of the atmosphere that made them tangible and moved them close. The mutability of those particular mountains reminded Anna of herself. And it wasn't simply the natural landscape that she attached herself to emotionally. It was the cobblestone roads of Zürich's old town and the spires of this church and the towers of that one. And the trains, the trains, the goddamn ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

EVERY FEW WEEKS AND SOMETIMES MORE OFTEN THAN THAT, the Benzes would receive in the postbox affixed to the wall outside their front door a notice printed on a half-size sheet of white paper, bordered in a bold black line. They were death announcements. Ein Bestattungsanzeige. The postman delivered them along with the mail whenever a Dietlikon resident died. It was a small-town courtesy, not a typical Swiss practice. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

There are two basic groups of German verbs ... strong and weak. Weak verbs are regular verbs that follow typical rules. Strong verbs are irregular. They don't follow patterns. You deal with strong verbs on your own terms ... Like people, ... The strong ones stand out. The weak ones are the same. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Sometimes, some of us in some things we do know better. When we know better, I think it's imperative that we do better. Otherwise we're perpetuating myths that have for centuries done us no good. Men and women alike. No one is exempt from being called into consciousness. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I'm cheating on the man I'm cheating on my husband with, Anna thought. I grow less decent every passing day. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Novelty's a cloth that wears thin at an alarming rate. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

She bought a pretzel from a vendor and ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Suggested they try the Glatt, an enormous American-style mall in Wallisellen, one town over from Dietlikon. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

For ... if love is not infinite or eternal? Then I want nothing of it. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Analysis isn't pliers, and truth is not teeth: you can't pull it out by force. A mouth stays closes as long as it wants to. Truth is told when it tells itself. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I've never been nearly as alone as I always say I am ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

She could go anywhere she wanted. The going wasn't the problem. The problem was belonging where she went. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I am beholden to my own peculiar irony: to survive I self-destruct. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Jung said that beautiful women were sources of terror. That as a general rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment. Anna ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Same seeks same; we search out the familiar. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

It's a travesty when a woman wastes herself. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A secret's safest hiding place is in the open. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Ghosts," Doktor Messerli continued, "aren't always the spirits of the human dead bound to the earth. A ghost can be the residual feeling that follows an act you have accomplished but feel bad about. Or the act itself. Something you've been or done that you cannot escape. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

We [people] are made separate by the things we do or do not do. Responsibilities of all types curb us. Desire betrays us. No wound is ever truly petty. And there are so many ways to be locked apart from the rest of the world. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I do believe that dreams are interpretable. Analysis and praxis have taught me so. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Is it possible to fall in love over a single look? Anna couldn't say. But at the behest of a glance tossed casually down upon her, she was made witness, victim, and slave to the culmination of all her mythologies. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

One day after class, she dropped her purse outside Bahnhof Oerlikon ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

When the morning skies grow red And o'er us their radiance shed, Thou, O Lord, appeareth in their light. When the Alps glow bright with splendor, Pray to God, to Him surrender, For you feel and understand, For you feel and understand, That he dwelleth in this land. That he dwelleth in this land. - FIRST VERSE OF THE "SCHWEIZERPSALM," THE SWISS NATIONAL ANTHEM ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

She thought about Switzerland. Where a smile will give you away as an American. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna was grateful for Ursula - really she was. But Ursula, who was usually never blatantly unkind to Anna, still treated her as a foreign object, a means to the end of her son's happiness (if indeed "happy" was the word for what Bruno was, and Anna was almost sure it wasn't) and the vessel by which her grandchildren - whom she deeply loved - were carried into the world. The help that Ursula offered was for the children's sake, not Anna's. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Shames the shadow of love she thought ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

To the non-Swiss ear it sounds as if the speaker is construing made-up words from the oddest rhythms and the queerest clipped consonants and the most perturbing arrangement of gaping, rangy vowels. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

No pain ever takes full leave of its person. That pain is greedy and doesn't give ground. That a body remembers what hurts it and how. Old pains get swallowed by new pains. But newer pains always follow suit. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Is that not always the case? Given any two people in a relationship, one will always love more, the other less. Right? ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

On another she made chitchat with the cashier at the Coop. That was an absolute first. The checker offered a forced, availing smile in return. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I'm suspicious of dreams in books too. Because they're boring and too self-serving. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Synchronicity is the external manifestation of an inner reality. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Truth is told when it tells itself. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

I am the sum of all my twitches. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Synchronicity often masquerades as coincidence. As right-place-right-time-ness. As an and-then-suddenly kind of incident. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Only in the present tense is the subject married to its verb. The action - all action, past and future - comes at the end. At the very end, when there is nothing left to do but act. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A man can smell a woman's sadness ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

No one is promised a tomorrow. She had been wrong about every man she loved or said she loved. She'd been wrong about everything. She'd entered into her life in the middle of its story. She had confused herself with the actress who portrayed her. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell. - JOAN CRAWFORD ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

He is not here. Where did it go, my grief, my grief?
Once you loved me on a hillside. I was pretty
and tender as silence. Some things I knew well enough:
first you love and then you lose.
I had no idea there was nothing more. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

The deepest sleep is meant only for children and perfect fools. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

And rose from her stool to make a big, bullying point of walking to the scales and weighing them herself. Anna felt scolded and two feet tall. She carried the agitation all the way home and didn't speak another word of German for the rest of the day. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Bored women join clubs and volunteer. Sad women have affairs. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

There's always a correspondence between one's dreams and one's wounds. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE between shame and guilt?" Anna asked. "Shame is psychic extortion," Doktor Messerli answered. "Shame lies. Shame a woman and she will believe she is fundamentally wrong, organically delinquent. The only confidence she will have will be in her failures. You will never convince her otherwise. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

As fussy as they were about cleanliness and order, the Swiss seemed to Anna to be rather lax about graffiti. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

A measure of narcissism is healthy. But out of balance, what was once appropriate self-confidence becomes grandiose, pathological, and destructive. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Pain is the proof of life ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Even the loveliest shoulders can bear but so much. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

What had she learned about verbs? In the past and future tenses, the verb came at the end. And in the present it followed the subject. Wherever she went it tailed her. She dragged it behind like a sack of stones. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Whores, Anna once read, make the very best wives. They are accustomed to the varying moods of men, they keep their broken hearts to themselves, and easy women always ease through grief. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

Anna's conclusions were these: That fire is beautifully cruel. That fusion occurs only at a specific heat. That blood, in fact, can boil. That the dissolution of an affair is an entropic reaction, and the disorder it tends toward is flammable. That a heart will burn. And burn and burn and burn. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

An obsession is a defense against feeling out of control. A compulsion is the failure of that defense. ~ Jill Alexander Essbaum

She was walking toward the beauty shop when Shay came out the door moving fast. The first thing Jill noticed was Shay's hair and how it appeared really big. As Shay drew closer, Jill realized she looked like she was wearing a mask with big blue streaks over the eyes and giant red pouty lips. "What happened to you?" Jill asked in shock. "I'm not sure," Shay said, looking just as stunned. "One minute, I was reading a magazine, and the next, two women that looked like Dolly Parton descended on me like vultures. They started putting stuff on my face, then they did all kinds of things to my hair." Anne walked out of the shop next; her Napoleon hat 'do rode higher than ever. Ella followed with her little red hair ball reinflated. "Doesn't Shay just look beautiful?" Ella chirped. She looked like a hooker who'd just survived a wind tunnel, but Jill nodded and tried to smile. ~ Robin Alexander

Maribel was dancing a dream I could only dream to dance. ~ Jill S. Alexander

Do you not see the tragic irony in killing Rudolph to get into the Christmas parade? ~ Jill S. Alexander

As if my day couldn't get any worse, I was about to be preached to by an Evangelical Elvis impersonator. ~ Jill S. Alexander

That even now, even after all the years of dreaming, of wanting, she is not Tristan, and she is not Jill, and she is not anyone who can recklessly seize unexpected opportunities. ~ Nick Alexander

Do the thing you love to do. Hank Williams died at the ripe old age of twentynine. Stevie Ray Vaughan at thirty-five. Jesus at thirtythree. Don't think you're special and the Lord's gonna bless you with time. ~ Jill S. Alexander

The most beautiful part of the day isn´t always the brightest. ~ Jill S. Alexander

She likes the calm before the day begins, this sensation that everyone she loves is sleeping nearby. It's so much easier to love them when they're asleep, after all. When ~ Nick Alexander

There are a whole bunch of people - Republicans or sports fans or reality TV fans - who probably would never have recognized that they have trans people in their world. Caitlyn Jenner really is thinking about the movement and saving lives, so I know that her intentions are honorable. ~ Jill Soloway

As a community college professor for over twenty years, I've seen the determination, resilience and dedication of countless students. Regardless of circumstances, they show up. They work hard. They believe anything is possible. ~ Jill Biden

The trouble with the world today, she thought, was that people were not prepared to stand up to bad behaviour. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow ... There must be reasons why the leaves decay.
(From Auden's If I Could Tell You ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The stark and sobering reality is that, for reasons largely unrelated to actual crime trends, the American penal system has emerged as a system of social control unparalleled in world history. And while the size of the system alone might suggest that it would touch the lives of most Americans, the primary targets of its control can be defined largely by race. ~ Michelle Alexander

Sir Seretse Khama, ~ Alexander McCall Smith

He nodded, still holding her gaze in that way he had that convinced her that not only could he read her mind, but he could see right through her. Inside her. ~ Jill Shalvis

The basket of remembrance has three sides; one is open, can it tilt and spill out? ~ Elizabeth Alexander

I'm an ass." "I appreciate you realizing that. ~ Jill Shalvis

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame - shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: "Regardless of what you feel like you've done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, 'Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn't a happened that way.'" After her son's arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family's suffering private. Constance is not alone. ~ Michelle Alexander

Primarily, we need to change 100 years of thinking, where we try to extend the promise of American life by moving things to Washington, and let's move it the other way: less of Washington, more from ourselves. ~ Lamar Alexander

I tried to pretend that kiss meant nothing. I tried to pretend she didn't have permanent residence in my dreams. I tried to pretend I wasn't using her to feel wanted, and I tried to pretend I wasn't dying to see her again - I became the great pretender. ~ Tali Alexander

Feminists in Greenwich Village had begun bobbing their hair in 1912. In 1915, it was still radical. "The idea, it seems, came from Russia," the New York Times reported. "The intellectual women of that country were revolutionaries. For convenience in disguising themselves when the police trailed them, they cropped their hair."2 Holloway was something of a revolutionary, too. ~ Jill Lepore

Art is only art if it is synonymous with living ~ Alexander Girard

No matter what you do, no matter how far away you run, what's written in the stars cannot be undone. ~ Tali Alexander

We can reconstruct yesterday or construct today. We don't have time to do both. ~ Lauren Alexander

Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction. Anyone who has read a novel by Charles Dickens knows that the liberal regimes of nineteenth-century Europe gave priority to individual freedom even if it meant throwing insolvent poor families in prison and giving orphans little choice but to join schools for pickpockets. Anyone who has read a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of daily life. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

We going to argue about this?" he asked.
"Don't we argue about everything?"
"Good point," he said. "Let's settle this one like adults - in the bedroom, naked. ~ Jill Shalvis

Say the rest, not when his brother was so white and stiff. "And?" "And they realized the caller meant a bomb in the theater. The police were there within minutes, five, ten at the most. They heard it go off." Alexander pressed his lips together. "Where?" "In her office. Alexander," he continued quickly, "she wouldn't have been in there. Eve's too smart for that. ~ Nora Roberts

Every evil screams only one message: 'I am good.' ~ Alexander Schmemann

Index-learning turns no student pale,
Yet holds the eel of Science by the tail.
Index-learning is a term used to mock pretenders who acquire superficial knowledge merely by consulting indexes. ~ Alexander Pope

As they emerged into the sunlight, Guinevere's breath caught in her throat. There were more than a thousand men gathered on the green in front of her. "Mother of God," the abbeys said, "there's an army at my door. ~ S. Alexander O'Keefe

One day, I just got up to read a poem and started singing. I looked around - the reaction was great. And I said, 'Oh, boy. I like this.' ~ Jill Scott