Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We accept, reject, and discern through symbols. These are as important to our understanding of life, our understanding of existence and what has value, whats worthwhile, as math and science... it’s all part of how we work through things, how we make decisions.”

— Iain Reid

52. “The more we tell ourselves that we should always be happy, that happiness in an end in itself, the worse it gets.”

— Iain Reid

53. “You can hold beliefs and not always believe in them.”

— Iain Reid

54. “This is what we desire as humans – security, certainty, affirmation.”

— Iain Reid

55. “I should have told someone. But I didn’t. I didn’t think it was anything significant until it was.”

— Iain Reid

56. “We have a real connection, a rare and intense attachment. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

— Iain Reid

57. “I’m thinking of ending things. Onc 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... You can’t fake a thought. And this is what I’m thinking.”

— Iain Reid

58. “My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. You get used to the dark after awhile. Not the quiet.”

— Iain Reid

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

62. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

65. “Reality happens only once.”

— Iain Reid

66. “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

67. “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

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

— Iain Reid

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

75. “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

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

— Iain Reid

77. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

81. “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

82. “I’m thinking of childhood. Memories. I can’t stop myself. Those moments of childhood I haven’t thought about in years or ever.”

— Iain Reid

83. “The most important things are perpetually overlooked. Until something like this. Then they are impossible to ignore. What does that say?”

— Iain Reid

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “We can’t and don’t know what others are thinking. We can’t and don’t know what motivations people have for doing the things they do. Ever. Not entirely. This was my terrifying, youthful epiphany. We just never really know anyone. I don’t. Neither do you.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

89. “She also seems a bit shaky, or delicate, as if she might at any moment shatter like a dropped glass.”

— Iain Reid

90. “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.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

92. “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

93. “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

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

— Iain Reid

95. “We don’t just understand or recognize significance and validity through experience. We accept, reject, and discern through symbols.”

— Iain Reid

96. “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

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

— Iain Reid

98. “I never saw it coming – his illness, I mean. He just sort of lost it. It can happen. But it makes you wonder about knowing people. He’s my brother. But I don’t know if I ever really knew him.”

— Iain Reid

99. “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

100. “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