Alex Michaelides

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.

then, slowly, in the darkness, I realized something.

I didn’t want to die. Not yet; not when I hadn’t lived.

You become increasingly comfortable with madness—and not just the madness of others, but your own.

Brutal, yes—and unkind. I’m not proud of that phone call. But it seemed like the only honest action to take. I still don’t know what I could have done differently.

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

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

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may

convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.

If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips;

betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.

—SIGMUND FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

painting was a self-portrait. She titled it in the bottom left-hand corner of the canvas, in light blue Greek lettering.

One word:

Alcestis.

I need to open my eyes and look—and be aware of life as it is happening, and not simply how I want it to be.