Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 3 of 4

101. “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. We can’t do whatever we want. There are ways we have to act. There are things we have to say. But we can think whatever we want.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

103. “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

104. “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

105. “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

106. “It’s dark, but not entirely.”

— Iain Reid

107. “Her face starts to hurt from so much smiling.”

— Iain Reid

108. “Are some things meant to be, meant to happen? There are some things we can’t explain. Some call it fate. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t have to know more than that. Maybe the orbit we inhabit is preordained. I’m okay with it even if I don’t really believe in that kind of thing. You can hold beliefs and not always believe in them.”

— Iain Reid

109. “It seems to me that in the context of life and existing and people and relationships and work, being sad is one correct answer. It’s truthful. Both are right answers. The more we tell ourselves that we should always be happy, that happiness is an end in itself, the worse it gets. And by the way, this isn’t a very original thought or anything. You know I’m not trying to be brilliant right now, right? We’re just talking.”

— Iain Reid

110. “Nothing wakes me up like a laugh, really, even just one big laugh, as long as it’s sincere. It’s better than caffeine.”

— Iain Reid

111. “I was never inspired by something whole. It was always a fragment, a crumb, a piece of a moment, a half-forgotten impression, one side of a person. Never fully formed because it could only be my view of a thing, not someone else’s.”

— Iain Reid

112. “I don’t often talk – or even think – about it. It’s sort of a nebulous, patchy memory. But the parts I recall, I remember with clarity.”

— Iain Reid

113. “It’s just very hard to talk about. Once I bring up these doubts, I can’t go back.”

— Iain Reid

114. “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

115. “Nothing makes sense. I want this to end.”

— Iain Reid

116. “We can’t go back upstairs again. We can’t. We tried. We really tried. We did our best. How long can we suffer?”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

118. “We’ve been everywhere. There’s nowhere else to go.”

— Iain Reid

119. “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

120. “It was weird to be all alone again for those two days when he was away. That was what I’d been used to, before, but after, it felt insufficient. I missed him. I missed being with another person.”

— Iain Reid

121. “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

122. “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

123. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

127. “Someone is in there. Someone who wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have to be. If he could be somewhere else, anywhere else, that’s where he’d be.”

— Iain Reid

128. “There’s no definitive border between the start and the end. We’ll never fully understand or know it. We can’t.”

— Iain Reid

129. “I don’t think Jake wants me to see this. The thought only makes me want to stay here longer, though.”

— Iain Reid

130. “I’ve made the decision. There’s no other way. It’s too late. After what has happened, for all this time, for all these years.”

— Iain Reid

131. “I guess, more than anything, I want to be myself,” he says. “I want to be. To be me.”

— Iain Reid

132. “Sadness is a normal human condition, no different from happiness. You wouldn’t think of happiness as an illness. Sadness and happiness need each other.”

— Iain Reid

133. “From a distance, they seemed content, relaxed. Up close, it was a different story. I told you: life isn’t always pleasant.”

— Iain Reid

134. “Maybe they were lucky, to go like that after what they’d been through. To at least be liberated from some of the suffering.”

— Iain Reid

135. “He was watching me. That’s why he was there.”

— Iain Reid

136. “Everything is impossibly fragile.”

— Iain Reid

137. “The idea that we are better off with one person for the rest of our lives is not an innate truth of existence. It’s a belief we want to be true. Forfeiting solitude, independence, is a much greater sacrifice than most of us realize. Sharing a habitat, a life, is for sure harder than being alone. In fact, coupled living seems virtually impossible, doesn’t it? To find another person to spend all your life with? To age with and change with? To see every day, to respond to their moods and needs?”

— Iain Reid

138. “What cues us that something is not innocent? Instinct always trumps reason.”

— Iain Reid

139. “How do we know when something is menacing? What cues us that something is not innocent? Instinct always trumps reason. At night, when I wake up alone, the memory still terrifies me. It scares me the older I get. Each time I remember it, it seems worse, more sinister. Maybe each time I remember it, I make it worse than it was. I don’t know.”

— Iain Reid

140. “I want to think about nice things, but I can’t. I cover my ears. I’m crying. There’s no way out.”

— Iain Reid

141. “It’s hard to say what happy is.”

— Iain Reid

142. “That was so long ago. Years. It was inconsequential to her and to everyone else. Except us.”

— Iain Reid

143. “But we can’t, even the most practical-minded of us, understand the world through rationality, not entirely. We depend on symbols for meaning.”

— Iain Reid

144. “So much to depend on, and so much to fear. So many requirements.”

— Iain Reid

145. “It was inevitable. We understand that now. It’s what we knew would happen. There was no other option. After everything, it’s all there is.”

— Iain Reid

146. “She smiled in a way I’d never seen before. It stretched across her face like a wound.”

— Iain Reid

147. “Maybe if we had all the time in the world, life would start to feel meaningless. Or worse.”

— Iain Reid

148. “I’d prefer to go somewhere a little less intense, or stay home.”

— Iain Reid

149. “Suffering like that is unendurable.”

— Iain Reid

150. “To really know ourselves, we have to question ourselves.”

— Iain Reid