Top 160 Iain Reid Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

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

— 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. “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

106. “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

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

— Iain Reid

108. “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

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

— Iain Reid

110. “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

111. “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

112. “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

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

— Iain Reid

114. “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

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

— Iain Reid

116. “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

117. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

121. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

124. “Suffering like that is unendurable.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

129. “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

130. “He told me he likes the phot because it’s him, yet physically, he’s completely different now from the child he sees in the photo. He doesn’t just mean he looks different but that every cell captured in the image has died, been shed and replaced by new cells.”

— Iain Reid

131. “I didn’t think it was anything significant until it was. Now I know better.”

— Iain Reid

132. “We’re mad at these limits and needs. Human limits and fragility.”

— Iain Reid

133. “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

134. “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

135. “Individually, I blend in. So does he. As a couple, we stand out.”

— Iain Reid

136. “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

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

140. “Now he asks me? After all this time?”

— Iain Reid

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Iain Reid

144. “It’s where we’re meant to be. In the end, we can’t deny who we are, who we were, where we’ve been. Who we want to be doesn’t matter when there’s no way to get there.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid

146. “You can’t be only alone.”

— Iain Reid

147. “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

148. “It’s not heart-stopping or intense or bloodcurdling or graphic or violent. No jump scares. To me, these qualities aren’t usually scary. Something that disorients, that unsettles what’s taken for granted, something that disturbs and disrupts reality – that’s scary.”

— Iain Reid

149. “Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.”

— Iain Reid

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

— Iain Reid