The Silent Patient

Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

“A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth.

That’s the truth. I didn’t kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.

Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.

That’s the terrible irony: I did all this to keep Kathy—and I’ve lost her anyway

The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.

love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love

Maybe that’s what the painting is about. Gabriel is my whole world—and has been since the day we met. I’ll love him no matter what he does, or what happens—no matter how much he upsets me—no matter how untidy or messy he is—how thoughtless, how selfish. I’ll take him just as he is.

Until death do us part.