Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I think there’s a perception that fear and terror and dread are fleeting. That they hit hard and fast when they do, but they don’t last. It’s not true. They don’t fade unless they’re replaced by some other feeling. Deep fear will stay and spread if it can. You can’t outrun or outsmart or subdue it. Untreated, it will only fester. Fear is a rash.”

— Iain Reid

52. “How much of you can fall off before something important is lost?”

— Iain Reid

53. “The tragedy of life isn’t that the end comes. That’s the gift. Without an end, there’s nothing. There’s no meaning. Do you see? A moment isn’t a moment. A moment is an eternity. A moment should mean something. It should be everything.”

— Iain Reid

54. “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. As Jake pointed out once, every time someone says “Pleased to meet you,” they’re actually thinking something different, making some judgment. Feeling “pleased” is never exactly what they’re thinking or feeling, but that’s what they say, and we listen.”

— Iain Reid

55. “School is the place we all have to go. There is potential. School is about the future. Looking forward to something, progression, growing, maturing. It’s supposed to be safe here, but is has become the opposite. It feels like a prison.”

— Iain Reid

56. “Maybe I’ve actually known all along. Maybe this is how it was always going to end.”

— Iain Reid

57. “What if it doesn’t get better? What if death isn’t an escape?”

— Iain Reid

58. “What if suffering doesn’t end with death? How can we know? What if it doesn’t get better? What if death isn’t an escape? What if the maggots continue to feed and feed and feed and continue to be felt? This possibility scares me.”

— Iain Reid

59. “Now it’s my heart. I’m angry with it. The constant beating. We’re wired to be unaware of it, so why am I aware of it now? Why is the beating making me angry? Because I don’t have a choice. When you become aware of your heart, you want it to stop beating. You need a break from the constant rhythm, a rest. We all need a rest.”

— Iain Reid

60. “The most attractive thing in the world is the combination of confidence and self-consciousness. Blended together in the proper amounts. Too much of either and all is lost.”

— Iain Reid

61. “Good news for someone often means bad news for someone else.”

— Iain Reid

62. “This lie is one about life, that we need more of it, that we need to be more productive, produce more, that it has to be longer, that death is the enemy. It’s not true. Infinity is a breathtaking mystery, or so I used to believe. Now I know it’s not. Infinity is stagnant. It doesn’t expand. It can’t. It’s just immeasurable. It’s not a mystery, it’s simply endless.”

— Iain Reid

63. “I wish I had done more. There’s not enough time for me now. I had years and years’ worth of time. It went so fast. It went too fast.”

— Iain Reid

64. “To really know ourselves we have to question ourselves. I always liked that idea.”

— Iain Reid

65. “When we choose to bring the end closer, we create a new beginning.”

— Iain Reid

66. “It seems to me, maybe for the first time, that there are varying degrees of dead. Like there are varying degrees of everything: of being alive, of being in love, of being committed, of being sure. These lambs aren’t sleepwalking through life. They aren’t discouraged or sick. They aren’t thinking about giving up. These tailless lambs are dead, extremely dead, ten-out-of-ten dead.”

— Iain Reid

67. “Reality happens only once.”

— Iain Reid

68. “It had an effect of malice, as if he were suggesting I could never be completely on my own, that he would be around, that he would be back. I was suddenly afraid. The thing is, that feeling is just as real to me now as it was then. The visuals are just as real.”

— Iain Reid

69. “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

70. “What if suffering doesn’t end with death? How can we know? What if it doesn’t get better? What if death isn’t an escape?”

— Iain Reid

71. “What came before is hard to remember. Not that I want to. Those times don’t matter. Now is what’s important, not then.”

— Iain Reid

72. “Depression is a serious illness. It’s physically painful, debilitating. And you can’t just decide to get over it in the same way you can’t just decide to get over cancer. Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn’t think of happiness as an illness.”

— Iain Reid

73. “Most relationships I’ve been in were like a carton of milk reaching its expiration date. It gets to a certain point and just sours, not inducing sickness but enough to notice a change in flavor. Maybe instead of wondering about Jake, I should be questioning my ability to experience passion. This could all be my fault.”

— Iain Reid

74. “I imagine school isn’t a nice place for her. It’s probably lonely. I bet she doesn’t like being here. She’s smart and capable, but for various reasons prefers leaving school to arriving. School should be a place she likes, where she feels welcome. I bet it’s not. That’s just my feeling. Maybe I’m reading into things.”

— Iain Reid

75. “I could be completely honest and say, “I’m thinking of ending things.” But I don’t. I don’t say any of that.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

77. “Maybe it’s impossible. Maybe even in the longest, closest, most successful marriages, the one partner doesn’t always know what the other is thinking. 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

78. “My whole life, I could not remember anyone’s name. Nothing had made a formative impact on me. But right then I thought that might change. If I knew her name, I would remember it. That’s what she did, even before we’d met – she changed things.”

— Iain Reid

79. “A shock, no matter how potent, always wears off with time.”

— Iain Reid

80. “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

81. “I end up in the common room, the early-morning light, almost blue in color, not full sun yet. This has always been my favorite time of day because it doesn’t last. I would go to the park just for this magical hour. It’s so easy to miss. Everyone takes it for granted every single day they wake up. It’s only a moment. It’s magical, it’s beautiful.”

— Iain Reid

82. “It seems to me, maybe for the first time, that there are varying degrees of dead. Like there are varying degrees of everything: of being alive, of being in love, of being committed, of being sure.”

— Iain Reid

83. “I’ve been so careful. So self-aware. I’m confused less. I haven’t been reckless. I understand myself. My own limitless potential. There is so much potential. And now this. How did I get here? It’s not fair.”

— Iain Reid

84. “What’s going to happen will happen regardless. Awareness is beside the point.”

— Iain Reid

85. “What holds this together? What gives life significance? What gives it shape and depth? In the end it comes for us all. So why do we wait for it instead of making it happen? What am I waiting for?”

— Iain Reid

86. “Two nights ago, I couldn’t sleep. Yet again. I’ve been thinking too much for weeks.”

— Iain Reid

87. “There are so many things like this. Everything is impossibly fragile.”

— Iain Reid

88. “It’s not a nightmare. I wish it were. I wish I could just wake up. I’d give anything to be in my old bed, in my old room.”

— Iain Reid

89. “Ipseity is essentially just another way to say selfhood or individuality.”

— Iain Reid

90. “Sometimes even good news can prime you psychosomatically. It can play havoc with people mentally. I hope things have been stable.”

— Iain Reid

91. “It’s amazing that relationships can form and last under the constraints of never fully knowing. Never knowing for sure what the other person is thinking. Never knowing for sure who a person is.”

— Iain Reid

92. “Maybe I should have known how it was going to end for us. Maybe the end was written right from the beginning.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

94. “I was the physical embodiment of the numerical mean.”

— Iain Reid

95. “Maybe we’re not supposed to know all the answers. 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. I appreciate not knowing. Not knowing is human. That’s how it should be, like space. It’s unsolvable, and it’s dark, but not entirely.”

— Iain Reid

96. “How are we supposed to achieve a feeling of significance and purpose without feeling a link to something bigger than our own lives? The more I think about it, the more it seems happiness and fulfillment rely on the presence of others, even just one other.”

— Iain Reid

97. “I’ll never know why we came to this place, how I ended up confined like this, how I ended up so alone. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Why me?”

— Iain Reid

98. “Forfeiting solitude, independence, is a much greater sacrifice than most of us realize.”

— Iain Reid

99. “But I think now’s the best time to ask. It’s the only time to ask.”

— Iain Reid

100. “Would any of it have made a difference? Yes. No. Maybe. It doesn’t matter now. It didn’t happen.”

— Iain Reid