14 Quotes by Ariel Leve

For Liza, a greeting is an opportunity to make new friends. For me, it's yet more people I'll have to avoid.

I would have liked to have known you when you were happy.

Just because I ask for advice, it doesn’t mean I’m going to take it. But people get so offended. They take it so personally. It’s as if there’s an unspoken obligation that because they put in the time and went to the trouble, it feels like a rejection. Went to the trouble of what? Talking?

We tell our stories to be heard. Sometimes those stories free us. Sometimes they free others. When they are not told, they free no one. THE.

Solitary confinement, with company.

Children who are exposed to trauma and stressful situations become hypervigilant as adults. So they’re always scanning, looking for danger.

MCLEAN HOSPITAL IS known for its former residents who, with their distinguished madness, gave it a noted reputation. Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton.

When you have an erratic, unpredictable, and aggressive parent, a child will detect signs and know when not to say something or know when to hide, so a threat-detecting sense begins to emerge early on. In the end, it wires the individual to be acutely aware and highly reactive to perceived threats.

WHAT CONNECTS US are the basics, tenets of normalcy I never had. Need is redefined. Pots and pans, knives and dish towels, bed linens and bath mats don’t have to match. They don’t have to even exist.