It’s not about people believing the story. It’s about you knowing and holding it to be true.

trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he’s blamed himself for introducing...

The weekend break had begun with the usual resentment and had continued with half-repressed ill humour. It was, of course, his fault. He had been more ready to hurt his wife’s feelings and deprive his...

We turned an anthem into an assignment, a poem into a job description.

The most common lie uttered without thought, sincerity, resolve, or guilt: I love you.

People who excuse their faults and claim they didn’t deserved to be punished – there are lots of them. But those who don’t excuse their faults and admit they didn’t deserve to be spared –...

If you’ve had the right kind of education, it’s amazing how many things you can find to feel guilty about.

The question shouldn’t be, ‘Are we guilty about our Colonial past?’ it should be, ‘Why aren’t we more guilty about our corporate present?

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness.

I’m starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in...

Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt.

People pontificate, “Suicide is selfishness.” Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame,...

It takes more courage to be yourself than to live in the prison of ego with feelings of guilt. It takes a lot more courage to be happy than to be unhappy.

This is my sin for giving in to my own weaknesses. My heart just couldn’t keep up with the gigantic gap between dreams and reality. -Jellal Fernandes

He dropped the tavern apron in a heap on the floor and pulled the freshly laundered one up and over his head, tied it with slightly tremoring fingers. The vast whiteness felt like absolution.

She made him feel guilty at times. The problem was that she was so honest herself, almost transparent. It seemed criminal to be deceiving her.

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable.I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave...

The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit...

Guilt isn’t always a rational thing, Clio realized. Guilt is a weight that will crush you whether you deserve it or not.

…one half leaning in, one half pulling away.

You know what my father said about innocent clients? … He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it’ll...

Once upon a time there was a mother who, in order to become a mother, had agreed to change her name; who set herself the task of falling in love with her husband bit-by-bit, but...

And that for every negative event or coincidence that has happened since, imagining that you triggered them, that you made them happen makes you feel like you possess a degree of control that you don’t...

It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there is still to be written a book in which the murderer is the...

He was clearly not the murderer whom Hawksmoor was seeking, but it was generally the innocent who confessed: in the course of many enquiries, Hawksmoor had come across those who accused themselves of crimes which...

Shame without repentance doesn’t lose power when it is spoken, it only seeks approval.

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or...

It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. “I’ll take the shoes,” she said firmly.

Guilt’s just your ego’s way of tricking you into thinking that you’re making moral progress. Don’t fall for it, my dear.

I am often guilty of expecting the worst so as to avoid disappointment and welcome surprise.

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

I, however, have really never been anywhere yet, not because some sins or other could wrap themselves around me there, but because I’d rather sin at home, where God even announces the weather to me...

She closes her eyes, and I can see the moisture. She’s deep-breathing again, and I notice her hands are clutched around the opposing wrists, nails digging in deep, hard, scratching. Pain to replace pain.

I always welcomed the comforting cloak of night except for the times when I lost something in it.

If people ever question your loyalty, you never had theirs.

That’s the strangest thing about this life, about being in the ministry. People change the subject when they see you coming. And then sometimes those very same people come into your study and tell you...

Everyone in a decadent society, Lorrain urges, is guilty. Everyone loves masking murder and everyone takes masochistic pleasure in the risk of discovery and punishment.

You look good in a nun’s suit,” I said. It was a stupid thing to say, but I meant well by it. She looked down at the black robe as if she were seeing it...

Il n’est si homme de bien, qu’il mette à l’examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensées, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie.(There is no man so good that if he placed...

Buck Barrow, brother of Clyde Barrow (Bonnie & Clyde) was once asked “Where are you wanted by the law?” Barrow replied, “Wherever I’ve been.” What a picture of our own guilt. We cannot escape our...

When thinking about life, remember this: No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.

A selfish person can still love someone else, can’t they? Even when they’ve hurt them and let them down.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

I won’t cry. When the guilt is this heavy, you can’t. It just settles and stays with you, and it’s cold.

Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes...

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer...

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they’d have...

Living the good life as created beings depends on living within the limits and according to the truths of the human condition. Purity of heart and the capacity to channel desires toward personal self-mastery in...

Just as my body had changed at puberty, now I was developing a sense of guilt, a sense not only of how I appeared to others, but of how I appeared to myself, especially in...