Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “Suffering like that is unendurable.”

— Iain Reid

102. “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

103. “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

104. “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

105. “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

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

— Iain Reid

107. “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

108. “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

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

— Iain Reid

110. “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

111. “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

112. “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

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

— Iain Reid

114. “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

115. “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

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

— Iain Reid

117. “I’d only been half listening when he said it, so I’m surprised by how clearly I’m recalling his words now.”

— 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. “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

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

— Iain Reid

123. “He knows we have nowhere to go. He knew all along.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

125. “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

126. “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.”

— Iain Reid

127. “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

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

— Iain Reid

129. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

132. “It would have been nice to see her again, even just to talk, but he never did. He thought he might run into her. He hoped that kind of chance existed. It might have been easier the second time, that it might have progressed. But he didn’t get that chance. It never happened.”

— Iain Reid

133. “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

134. “It hurts, all of it, but we feel nothing.”

— Iain Reid

135. “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

136. “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

137. “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

138. “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

139. “There’s no noise outside the door. No knock. I didn’t hear any footsteps. It’s just a feeling. But it’s strong. I think someone’s right outside the door. Are they listening?”

— Iain Reid

140. “But now, if I do say something to Jake, I’ll also have to tell him I’ve been lying. It can’t keep going on. Not like this. Not anymore.”

— Iain Reid

141. “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

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

— Iain Reid

143. “Yes. You should read it. But maybe start at the end. Then circle back. First, though, I think you better sit down.”

— Iain Reid

144. “Something that disorients, that unsettles what’s taken for granted, something that disturbs and disrupts reality – that’s scary.”

— Iain Reid

145. “I think questions make us feel less lonely and more connected.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

147. “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

148. “I’m searching his face for answers, but I get nothing. He needs to step in here, help me. But he doesn’t.”

— Iain Reid

149. “Everything is impossibly fragile.”

— Iain Reid

150. “When you become aware of your heart, you want it to stop beating.”

— Iain Reid