Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I wish I’d done better. I wish I could have done more.”

— Iain Reid

2. “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

— Iain Reid

3. “I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It dominates. There’s not much I can do about it. Trust me. It doesn’t go away. It’s there whether I like it or not. It’s there when I eat. When I go to bed. It’s there when I sleep. It’s there when I wake up. It’s always there. Always.”

— Iain Reid

4. “Getting to know someone is like putting a never-ending puzzle together. We fit the smallest pieces first and we get to know ourselves better in the process.”

— Iain Reid

5. “I’m not sure what to say. I’m losing interest. Fast.”

— Iain Reid

6. “People talk about the ability to endure. To endure anything and everything, to keep going, to be strong. But you can do that only if you’re not alone. That’s always the infrastructure life’s built on. A closeness with others. Alone it all becomes a struggle of mere endurance.”

— Iain Reid

7. “Is intelligence always good? I wonder. What if intelligence is wasted? What if intelligence leads to more loneliness rather than to fulfillment? What if instead of productivity and clarity, it generates pain, isolation, and regret?”

— Iain Reid

8. “Habitual, comfortable activity is the worst kind of prison, because the bars are concealed. You can never learn anything that way.”

— Iain Reid

9. “The possibility of evil shocks you. But you aren’t the target, so it’s okay. You forget about it. You move on. It’s not happening to you. It happened to someone else.”

— Iain Reid

10. “Every story is made up. Even the real ones.”

— Iain Reid

11. “Even considering the data that shows the majority of marriages don’t last, people still think marriage is the normal human state. Most people want to get married. Is there anything else that people do in such huge numbers, with such a terrible success rate?”

— Iain Reid

12. “That’s what time does. It ushers a return to equilibrium. Unease becomes ease. A shock, no matter how potent, always wears off with time.”

— Iain Reid

13. “Being alone isn’t the worst thing. It’s okay to be lonely. I can deal with loneliness. We can’t have everything. I can’t have everything.”

— Iain Reid

14. “I smile, nod. Smile again. I don’t know what else to do.”

— Iain Reid

15. “Questions are good. They’re better than answers. If you want to know more about life, how we work, how we progress, it’s questions that are important. That’s what pushes and stretches our intellect. I think questions make us feel less lonely and more connected. It’s not always about knowing.”

— Iain Reid

16. “But what would the work mean if it was endless? What would a relationship mean if it kept going forever? What would a day be if it didn’t.”

— Iain Reid

17. “I wish this were more supernatural. A ghost story, for instance. Something surreal. Something from the imagination, no matter how vile. That would be much less terrifying. If it was harder to perceive or accept, if there was more room for doubt, I would be less scared. This is too real. It’s very real.”

— Iain Reid

18. “Who we want to be doesn’t matter when there’s no way to get there.”

— Iain Reid

19. “Interaction, connection, is compulsory. It’s something we all need. Solitude won’t sustain itself forever, until it does.”

— Iain Reid

20. “Jake is beyond help now. He tried. Help never came.”

— Iain Reid

21. “I think what I want is for someone to know me. Really know me. Know me better than anyone else and maybe even me.”

— Iain Reid

22. “I was unremarkable in the ways that matter in school. It was the worst type of oblivion, for years. I was scentless, invisible.”

— Iain Reid

23. “There’s only one question to resolve. I’m scared. I feel a little crazy. I’m not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.”

— Iain Reid

24. “For years, my life has been flat. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I’ve never admitted it before. I’m not depressed, I don’t think. That’s not what I’m saying. Just flat, listless. So much has felt accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary. It’s been lacking a dimension. Something seems to be missing.”

— Iain Reid

25. “We’re never inside someone else’s head. We can never really know someone else’s thoughts. And it’s thoughts that count. Thought is reality. Actions can be faked.”

— Iain Reid

26. “On the nights I can’t sleep, like that one, like so many recently, I wish I could just turn my mind off like a lamp.”

— Iain Reid

27. “The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”

— Iain Reid

28. “Other Animals Live In The Present. Humans Cannot, So They Invented Hope.”

— Iain Reid

29. “A memory is its own thing each time it’s recalled. It’s not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They’re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”

— Iain Reid

30. “That’s the thing. Part of everything will always be forgettable. No matter how good or remarkable it is. It literally has to be. To be.”

— Iain Reid

31. “There was no dependency. Dependency equates to seriousness.”

— Iain Reid

32. “Just tell your story. Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited. So just keep going.”

— Iain Reid

33. “The privilege of being human is that our brains are big enough to decide the fate of other creatures.”

— Iain Reid

34. “Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They’re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other.”

— Iain Reid

35. “You also know things are real when they can be lost.”

— Iain Reid

36. “Experience trumps age,′ he said. ‘We have to find ways to experience because that’s how we learn, that’s how we know.”

— Iain Reid

37. “I think a lot of what we learn about others isn’t what they tell us. It’s what we observe. People can tell us anything they want.”

— Iain Reid

38. “I’ve been told these old barns are physical reminders of an older life, when things were different. They need upkeep. They need to be restored. It would be a tragedy if the one in this field is ablaze. Another barn lost.”

— Iain Reid

39. “Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited.”

— Iain Reid

40. “Why bother taking notice of everything going on around you, filling up your mind with irrelevant details and excess information? What’s going to happen will happen regardless. Awareness is beside the point.”

— Iain Reid

41. “Ordinary is impossible. It’s more realistic to believe that we are all exceptional, that I, too, am singular, unique, that there has never been nor ever will be another me.”

— Iain Reid

42. “Why do people stay together”? They stay together because it’s expected, because it’s what they know. They try to make it work, to endure it, and end up living under some kind of spiritual anesthetic. They go on, but they are numb. There is nothing worse than to live your life this way. Detached, but abiding. It’s immoral.”

— Iain Reid

43. “Are small, critical actions enough? Small gestures make us feel good – about ourselves, about others. Small things connect us. They feel like everything. A lot depends on them. It’s not unlike religion and God. We believe in certain constructs that help us understand life. Not only to understand it, but as a means of providing comfort.”

— Iain Reid

44. “Seeing someone with their parents is a tangible reminder that we’re all composites.”

— Iain Reid

45. “Maybe that’s how we know when a relationship is real. When someone else previously unconnected to us knows us in a way we never thought or believed possible.”

— Iain Reid

46. “But isn’t being alone closer to the truest version of ourselves, when we’re not linked to another, not diluted by their presence and judgments? We form relationships with others, friends, family. That’s fine. Those relationships don’t bind the way love does. We can still have lovers, short-term. But only when alone can we focus on ourselves, know ourselves. How can we know ourselves without this solitude?”

— Iain Reid

47. “I can’t say this to Jake and I don’t, but maybe it’s better to be alone. Why abandon the routine we each master? Why give up the opportunity for many diverse relationships in exchange for one? There’s plenty of good with coupling up, I get it, but is it better? When single, I tend to focus on how much the company of someone would improve my life, increase my happiness. But does it?”

— Iain Reid

48. “I’ve expected you to understand how I’m feeling, and it just doesn’t happen. It’s so discouraging, draining. It’s like as long as we’re here, moving from day to day, your convinced that I’m happy. Honestly, I rarely feel happy. I don’t want to have to tell you everything. I shouldn’t have to. Not if you’re paying attention, even just a bit, considering me in a way that’s not just superficial. I want my own identity separate from being your wife. It’s just how it should be.”

— Iain Reid

49. “You can’t really understand a relationship until you live it, unless you’re in it.”

— Iain Reid

50. “When you become aware of your heart, you want it to stop beating. You need a break from the constant rhythm, a rest.”

— Iain Reid