Nic Sheff Quotes

And that leaves you with an interesting choice ... Do you sacrifice you own happiness and feelings of peace in order to have this relationship, or do you start to get well and choose a real life ... ? ~ Nic Sheff

editor in New York and my mom and dad on the phone. My body is weak and bloated. I'm slowly poisoning myself to death. And it's not like I haven't seen what this shit does to people. The most fucked-up detoxes I've ever seen are the people coming off alcohol. It's worse than heroin, worse than benzos, worse than anything. Alcohol can pickle your brain - leaving you helpless, like a child - infantilized - shitting in your pants - ranting madness - disoriented - angry - terrified. But that's not gonna be me, I mean, it can't be. I may hate myself. I may fantasize about suicide. But I'm way too vain to let myself die an alcoholic death. There's nothing glamorous about alcoholism. You don't go out like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, with a gorgeous woman riding you till your heart stops. Alcoholism takes you down slow, robbing you of every last bit of dignity on your way ~ Nic Sheff

It was like being in a car with the gas pedal slammed down to the floor and nothing to do but hold on and pretend to have some semblance of control. But control was something I'd lost a long time ago. ~ Nic Sheff

None of them seem as crazy obsessive about everything as I am. It's strange 'cause I had the same feeling in high school that I have here. It's like, well, it just seems so easy for everyone else and so difficult for me. I turn from these extremes of feeling on top of the fucking world - to feeling so despondent. They don't have to struggle like I do - or maybe that's just me comparing my goddamn insides to everyone else's outsides. But I swear to God, I just seem to wrestle with everything more than anyone else. ~ Nic Sheff

So you think you should just be able to kill yourself and no one should care? ... You don't think that your actions are gonna affect other people - the people who love you? ~ Nic Sheff

We only have this one moment: NOW. ~ Nic Sheff

As long as you look for someone else to validate who you are by seeking their approval, you are setting yourself up for disaster. You have to be whole and complete in yourself. No one can give you that. You have to know who you are - what others say is irrelevant. ~ Nic Sheff

Sure, I buried it. I buried it and buried it and turned away from everything light and sweet and delicate and lovely and became so scared and scarred and burdened and fucked up. But that goodness is there, inside - it must be. ~ Nic Sheff

What's glamorous is being a good father, a good husband, a good fucking dog owner. That's what I care about today. That's what matters. I will devote everything to that. And I will succeed. Because I cannot fall down again. I will not fall down again. I mean, I don't have to fall. None of us have to fall. We don't all fall down. We don't. So I'm over this drug shit. It's done. And this is my last recovery memoir ever. ~ Nic Sheff

It's like if the music is loud enough I won't be able to listen to my own thoughts. ~ Nic Sheff

Still, children seem like empty vessels who pick up on everything and are so affected by their surroundings. I mean, that's what they tell me in therapy and it seems to be true. Stuff I don't consciously remember affects my behavior every day. I see that now ~ Nic Sheff

I feel just, you know, defeated. ~ Nic Sheff

It happened so fast - so abruptly. An innocence I'd clung to was lost in that instant. ~ Nic Sheff

I don't want you to worry about protecting my feelings or your father's or anybody's. When you were little you always tried to make everyone ahppy. Then it was like one day you just exploded. ~ Nic Sheff

Honestly, I'm not sure how much longer I can keep doing this. It's like there are seven candles lit in my stomach. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven candles burning and smoking - lit - seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash. There is something at the back of my eyes- a pressure building, building, building - hot like the flames of seven candles, which no amount of breath can extinguish.
I imagine drinking glasses of water. One, two, three four, five, six, seven. I dive into the clearest pool. I drown myself in the coarse, dry sand. I swallow handfuls of crushed white salt, but the flames burn still - brighter, hotter, deeper. Sweat runs in delicate patterns down my back, over my crooked spine and jutting hips. I scratch at the wounds these last weeks have left, but I can't break free of them. The flies gather and vultures circle overhead. The fire eats away my flesh. The fire spreads. The fire runs through my veins. The fire courses beneath my muscles - my tendons - the marrow of my bones.
I sit rocking on the street corner. No, I can't keep doing this. I just can't. ~ Nic Sheff

I always get so overwhelmed trying to do everything perfectly. I can't do a job and not put everything I have into it. I need to be the best employee, the best co-worker, the best whatever. I need everyone to like me and I just burn out bending over backward to make that happen. Having people be mad at me is my worst fear. I can't stand it. There is this crazy fear I have of being rejected by anyone - even people I don't really care about. It's always better to leave them first, cut all ties, and disappear. They can't hurt me that way - no one can. ~ Nic Sheff

Now is now. There is nothing but now... This, right here, is all there is. ~ Nic Sheff

I'm not some total invalid ~ Nic Sheff

I realize that the times I have known some sort of inner peace in my life, those have always been times when I focused on helping others more than myself ... babysitting, cooking dinner for my family, cleaning up the house, talking to a friend on the phone and just listening to them vent about something or other without offering an opinion or judging. Those have been the moments when I get to stop obsessing about myself and really feel a sense of liberation. 'Freedom from the bondage of self ... ~ Nic Sheff

Everything is working out, he keeps saying. For the first time, I'm not so sure. I think back to my life sober - working, getting up early to go on bike rides and shit, going to movies. I haven't looked at a newspaper in over two weeks. There could be a new war going on and I'd have no idea. But this is the life I want to live, right? I mean, I'm happier. ~ Nic Sheff

They don't have to struggle like I do - or maybe that's just me comparing my goddamn insides to everyone else's outsides. ~ Nic Sheff

It's like the world's gravitational pull has just lessened tenfold. Everything trapped in me, rushing in and out like the ocean against a jetty - pounding over and over, trying to crush the breaker wall with each rhythmic explosion - has finally been taken away. I cry for that and I'm not sure what else. ~ Nic Sheff

It's like that story of the father whose son breaks his leg. The villagers come up and say, 'Your son broke his leg, what bad luck.' but the father replies, 'Good luck, bad luck, who knows?' Then there's a war and all the young men in the village must fight. There is a terrible battle and most everyone is killed - except for the man's son who couldn't fight because he broke his leg. So the villagers come up to him and say, 'What good luck, your son didn't have to fight and now he is alive.' But the father replies, 'Good luck, bad luck, who knows? ~ Nic Sheff

And though I have done many shameful things, I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of who I am because I know who I am. I have tried to rip myself open and expose everything inside - accepting my weaknesses and strengths - not trying to be anyone else. 'Cause that never works, does it?
So my challenge is to be authentic. An I believe I am today. I believe I am. ~ Nic Sheff

And I have this, for now. I just wish I could figure out how to keep my fucking mind from going all over the place - dwelling on all the loss and pain and everything I'VE DONE - then jumping off into the future to how impossible it all seems. ~ Nic Sheff

It seems like there is something about sharing your insides with the world that gives other people strength and hope and helps them not to feel so alone. ~ Nic Sheff

Again, fix the outsides and maybe my insides won't be such a dark place. ~ Nic Sheff

Fortunately I have a son, my beautiful boy
Unfortunately he is a drug addict.
Fortunately he is in recovery.
Unfortunately he relapses.
Fortunately he is in recovery again.
Unfortunately he relapses.
Fortunately he is not dead. ~ David Sheff

It's like there are seven candles lit in my stomach. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven candles burning and smoking - lit - seven flames of doubt, fear, sorrow, pain, waste, hopelessness, despair. They turn my insides black with soot and ash. There is something at the back of my eyes - a pressure building, building, building - hot like the flames of seven candles, which no amount of breath can extinguish. ~ Nic Sheff

It's not that I don't appreciate my life sober, but it's like there are two different people battling inside of me. I want to be good, do good, be a worker among workers, a friend among friends. But there's also this part of me that is so dissatisfied with everything, If I'm not living on the verge of death, I feel like I'm not really living. ~ Nic Sheff

I guess I just struggle with belonging to any organization. I always feel like I should be able to do it on my own. My ego tells me I'm better than all this ... I want to rebel against it, though of course, I don't really have any options. ~ Nic Sheff

Now is now ... There is nothing but now and I try to hold on to that. The past is gone, the future hasn't happened yet. This, right here, is all there is. ~ Nic Sheff

The dark is settling in. The sky glows yellow- pale- anemic from the city lights. The Tenderloin at night is a real horror show. Every 3 feet someone is accosting you with a plea for a handout or the offer of drug or sex. The men and women wander the streets and alleys with a threatening, violont want. Takers looking to take, hustlers looking to hustle, all trying to satisfy a craving that is parpatually unsatisfiable. And tonight I'm one of them. ~ Nic Sheff

Nic?" he asked, his voice low and near my ear. My stomach did a flip-flop.
"Yeah?" I whispered.
"You're going to have to learn to breathe when you're near me. We'll be doing this a lot."
My head whipped toward him, and he reared back slightly to put a little distance between our faces.
"You're unbelievable," I said.
"So I've been told. ~ Claire Contreras

Look, he's curled up in his bed sound asleep. You must have been dreaming." "That dog shouldn't be sleeping in here anyway. He snores." "Well, yes, but so do you." With that, Nic threw off the bedcovers and padded into the master bathroom. Gabe scowled down at the dog. He had plenty of places to sleep - Nic had dog beds scattered in almost every room in the house. "It's about time I assert myself as the alpha dog in the pack," Gabe declared. From now on, the boxer would be banished from the bedroom. As ~ Emily March

In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain wrote, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." He was quoting a Neil Young song about Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols. When I was twenty-four, I interviewed John Lennon. I asked him about this sentiment, one that pervades rock and roll. He took strong, outraged exception to it. "It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out, " he said. "I worship people who survive. I'll take the living and the healthy. ~ David Sheff

I wanted to be a filmmaker, actually, when I was in high school and college. But I just decided it would be more expensive to do, so I sort of decided music would be more fun. ~ Will Sheff

As someone with a novelistic background, I just didn't have much interest in creating stories by committee. I don't think you necessarily get the best story through that approach. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

I tried everything I could to prevent my son's fall into meth addiction. It would have been no easier to have seen him strung out on heroin or cocaine, but as every parent of a meth addict comes to learn, this drug has a unique, horrific quality. In an interview, Stephan Jenkins, the singer in Third Eye Blind, said that meth makes you feel "bright and shiny." It also makes you paranoid, delusional, destructive, and self-destructive. Then you will do unconscionable things in order to feel bright and shiny again. ~ David Sheff

It's an incontrovertible fact that many--more than half of all children--will try [drugs]. For some of those, drugs will have no major negative impact on their lives. For others, however, the outcome will be catastrophic. ~ David Sheff

I remember doing the sex scene in Red Rock West. I had to kiss Nic Cage and then look like I was going down on him. And he couldn't do anything - he just had to lie there. ~ Lara Flynn Boyle

So I started to learn Russian and I was one of those probably way too eager, annoying young actor kids who was trying to change all my lines to Russian, much to the dismay of the director and Nic Cage. ~ Jared Leto

All told, in the United States, the sex industry grosses more than the domestic revenue of the tobacco and alcohol industries put together. All told, the American male spends more money annually per capita on the sex industry than on taking his wife to the movies and buying video games for his children. All told, the American male is clearly not getting what he wants at home. ~ Nic Kelman

TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

I was raised in a heavily Catholic family. Early and consistent encounters with mysticism. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

Her diaper is soiled. A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper. Back when Nic was alive, Island used to offer free gift wrap at Christmas, and he figures that diaper changing and gift-wrapping must be related proficiencies. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

We're all good when we want to be, otherwise we're fucking animals. There's no VIP room in reality, and there is no reality in this city. You can't Google the answers. People talke about being on the ride of your life - THIS IS YOUR LIFE. Whatever you need to know, you already know. Imagine what it is to be in another country, another landscape - heat, insects, fear. Imagine watching someone right in front of you trip on a wire, step on a mine, blow their body to shreds, in mid-sentences, mid-cigarette. Imagine yourself splattered with human flesh. Imagine talking to that boy for the five minutes when he is profoundly conscious of the fact that he is not goingt to make it home. Imagine the difference between that and being in upstate New York, drinking beer, trying to get laid, and spending the summer as lifeguard at Lake George. Imagine zipping your friends into body bags. Tell me why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. How could anyone not be angry? You'd have to be insane." --Nic Thompson ~ A.M. Homes

I'm not pro-life. I'm very emphatically pro-choice. ~ Will Sheff

But here's the rub of addiction. By its nature, people afflicted are unable to do what, from the outside, appears to be a simple solution - don't drink. Don't use drugs. In exchange for that one small sacrifice, you will be given a gift that other terminally ill people would give anything for: life. ~ David Sheff

Sometimes I am all right. Is this what they call letting go? I have let go, if letting go means I am all right sometimes. ~ David Sheff

He turned to her then. Though he prolly shouldn't have. Cuz feelings. ~ Nic Stone

you just wanted her to say, "I know what that's like." But of course, she can't say that, will never say that. And if she ever could then you could no longer be with her. Then you would both be tired. Then she would be a better friend, but a worse lover. ~ Nic Kelman

You want to be on your toes; You don't want to be in a Nic Cage movie and just have him blow by you as an actor. ~ Harold Perrineau

Whatever I watched, whatever I loved in 36 years of life on Earth, probably had some influence on me. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.' ~ Nic Pizzolatto

For me as a storyteller, I want to follow the characters and the story through what they organically demand. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

being an introvert is less about one's personality type and more about how someone prefers to recharge their batteries. This ~ Nic Williams

It's because they don't understand good sex has nothing to do with equality. ~ Nic Kelman

How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person? ~ David Sheff

Yes, Seth, he took a nap and Perses snuck in the back door and let them out. Then they skipped through the Vale of Mourning, stopped to have a pic-a-nic and then decided to leave the Underworld all slow-like, and all the while Hades was chillin' and doing nothing. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Once and for all, people must understand that addiction is a disease. It's critical if we're going to effectively prevent and treat addiction. Accepting that addiction is an illness will transform our approach to public policy, research, insurance, and criminality; it will change how we feel about addicts, and how they feel about themselves. There's another essential reason why we must understand that addiction is an illness and not just bad behavior: We punish bad behavior. We treat illness. ~ David Sheff

I was always a fan of Nic. With his movie, you know it's "A Nic Refn Movie." ~ Elle Fanning

I know there is no point in haranguing him because he will just shut down, but I want to cover every angle. ~ David Sheff

Ding! Ding! Ding! I tapped the brass bell in rapid succession until Violet bustled in from the back room, wearing the blue-and-white pinafore that was the SugarWerks's uniform and a frown that was not. The same age as Nic and I, Violet wore her amethyst hair spiked and a brass gearring stud on the left side of her nose. On one set of knuckles, BAKE was tattooed in elaborate black calligraphy; CAKE was on the other. Today she had an aquamarine bow pinned to the top of her head, a silver cupcake and crossbones marking the spot between the two loops of ribbon. ~ Lisa Mantchev

This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague [drugs]
an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families. ~ David Sheff

That's when it struck me that I can't take my life as long as I can still laugh. ~ David Sheff

I always think it's far more admirable to confuse people than it is to reassure them. ~ Will Sheff

It gives us a look into a world that's very much like 'Traffic' was for drugs, this movie is for gun running. Dark at times, but I think Nic Cage is an incredible person to watch and very entertaining. ~ Jared Leto

If you are a certain kind of hands-on learner and have been in a writers room and know how scripts get made, and you know what pre-production is, then mostly it's making sure the actors get what they need, and you are providing creative oversight while allowing room for everyone else to own the material, too. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

I don't know if it's a forever deal, a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere. But I want to try, for Harry's sake. And I love it all when you're here. It's like you made it new for me. You--you are my forever deal."
There it was again, that dangerous, beautiful word. In Gaelic, wilder and lovelier still. "A-chaoidh."
"Yes, forever, Nic. A-chaoidh. ~ Harper Fox