Alex Michaelides

“A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth.

That’s the truth. I didn’t kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.

Tell me tales of thy first love—
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Vision of Sin

This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.

could feel myself thawing in the heat, softening around the edges

My heart raced as though I had encountered a long-lost friend; which I suppose I had.

When I’m around other people, even if it’s only the bored waitress in here, I feel connected to the world somehow, like a human being.

Otherwise I’m in danger of ceasing to exist. Like I might disappear.

The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.

—ALICE MILLER