I would rather collapse inward and disappear than explode and scatter around.

 I would rather collapse inward and disappear than explode and scatter around.

― Atrona Grizel

Teens have seen nothing, yet they think they have seen everything. What complicates matters is that the awareness, which usually appears in later years, arises at this age instead. If a 15-year-old body carries the brain of a 50-year-old, this person’s already fragile ties to the physical world are severed the moment they set foot in it. Because of their age, they also have no chance to speak out or to persistently oppose; thus, it is impossible for them to express themselves outwardly. Even if they were to express themselves, there are very few who could grasp it. A vast universe is crammed inside them, and this universe is, as it were, locked away from the outside, not with locks but with existential barriers. Yet their peers, in the midst of a smug inexperience, are rather content. Adolescents are wild and primitive animals roaming in groups, for that is the social rule. And with what they do, they boast, pushing away those who do not do as they do, so that the stage is left to the insane. After all, to blend in among the crowd of mad, one must be like them.

― Atrona Grizel

I do not believe anyone will understand me, and without understanding, love and interest are pointless anyway, except for those of children, because even if they do not deeply comprehend adults, they can become very attached to them. I have gone very deep. I have gone so deep that I no longer even write this as praise directed at myself. The creatures of the surface can no longer reach my depth. That is, me, a submarine creature living on the ocean floor. Everyone else lives on the surface. They do not know how to breathe underwater; I, on the other hand, have forgotten what oxygen is.

― Atrona Grizel

The person who will understand me may not have appeared yet. They may never appear. But this doesn’t mean that I am incomprehensible—it only means that I am not understood.

― Atrona Grizel

The one who is truly lucid can never belong among the delusional patients. The only thing that will happen is that the sick will see themselves as healthy, and the one who is healthy will be regarded as the sick one.

― Atrona Grizel

I wrote sloppily; they humiliated me and didn’t like it. I wrote well; they envied me and didn’t believe it. I didn’t write anything at all; they mocked me and dismissively walked away.

― Atrona Grizel

No one will read my writings. Even if they do, they won’t understand. Even if they understand, they won’t care. Even if they care, they won’t act. Even if they act, it won’t make any impact. And even if it makes an impact, everything is temporary, after all.

― Atrona Grizel

Y: “Be yourself.”

X: “How?”

Y: “Just be yourself.”

― Atrona Grizel

When disgust and hatred for humanity disappear, a person begins to live, amidst all these beings, in utter solitude as though they were the last person left on earth. For even hostility points to the fact that there is still a bond with the thing one is hostile toward. Once the pinnacle of cynicism becomes the abolishment of cynicism itself, a person begins to live like a ghost drifting here and there, affecting nothing and being affected by nothing. To hate is to honor the hated. Rivals, even if they never admit it and even if they themselves remain unaware of it, secretly love each other. But once hatred disappears, existence itself vanishes.

― Atrona Grizel

Just as crime ceases to exist when everyone is guilty, so too does a lie cease to be a lie and become reality when it is universally believed.

― Atrona Grizel

Modern humans feel a sense of happiness on Friday, believing that they are free at last. But on Monday, they will go to that place again, with their own feet. And the cycle repeats.

― Atrona Grizel

The only thing that prevents a global rebellion is, in fact, those two days of the weekend. If those two days were also taken away, it would finally feel like true enslavement. To feel a desire to get rid of chains, one must first acknowledge that they are a slave. Only by admitting this can the desire for a different thing begins, after all. But as long as those two days remain, the system persists day after day and feels so natural that it is not even questioned.

― Atrona Grizel

In the struggle of existence I’ve learned one thing: in moments when I’m too overwhelmed, I “switch myself off” like pressing a button and wait for it to simply pass by.

― Atrona Grizel

I can accept you only by rejecting you.

― Atrona Grizel

Having an advanced career is not so much an “indicator of intelligence” as a deception of formality. I have seen so many people who, on paper, were something—but outside of paper, the opposite, or at least not that thing at all. Because nothing written on paper reflects reality. Once paperwork enters a matter, real life is poisoned by bureaucracy. Someone who appears to work for the protection of animals in public life may in private be one who tortures animals, for instance. That possibility always exists.

― Atrona Grizel

For me to understand all relationships, witnessing one is enough.

― Atrona Grizel

I have never been able to reconcile with, nor am I interested in resolution, those who see the world not as a kind of project or simulation to be questioned but as a kind of novel or “adventure” to be explored—usually the naive young “experience-hunters” far removed from any intellectuality.

― Atrona Grizel

I live in the silences, called “ridiculous” or “absurd,” that emerge during conversations, and from there every dialogue sounds ridiculous and absurd.

― Atrona Grizel

Even in death, the state lingers. One cannot simply die; they must die “properly,” through funerals, death certificates, burial permits, and registered graves.

― Atrona Grizel

For most, the state governs their soul. For a few, the state governs only their skin.

― Atrona Grizel

One matures through suffering. And as they mature, they suffer even more.

― Atrona Grizel

It is exceedingly rare for one who has not endured extraordinary experiences to develop an extraordinary perspective.

― Atrona Grizel

There are two forms of insight: one hardened by events, the other by ideas. The first is the usual kind; the second comes not necessarily from seeing too much, but from feeling too much.

― Atrona Grizel

I feel as if I have pressed the “skip” button and passed through adolescence.

― Atrona Grizel

As long as unnecessary external distractions exist, the ordinary mind’s thoughts will orbit around them. The herd wonders when the bus will come, where the store is, whether their clothes look appealing, or what to eat for dinner. They concern themselves with the latest fashion trends, the next meal, or the breaking news of some random conflict unfolding on the opposite side of the world. These are not profound contemplations; they are synthetic distractions crafted by a world designed to keep minds perpetually occupied, tethered to the mundane.

― Atrona Grizel

The moment it is realized that the goal was to destroy the world rather than save it, to be dynamite rather than an architect, a world is created from the ashes—and none are let in but the self.

― Atrona Grizel

As children, dreams are filled with heroes. As adults, tears fall with deep understanding before the “villains.”

― Atrona Grizel