By Category: Other People

“It only happened in novels or movies that summer was filled with dazzling sun. What existed in reality were humble, small-town Sundays...a man taking his snooze under the political columns of a newspaper, enveloped in gunsmoke...canned juices and thermos jugs with magnetized caps...boats for hire, fifty cents an hour - queue up here...foaming beaches with the leaden scum of dead fish...and then, at the end, a jam-packed trolley rickety with fatigue. Everyone knows this is fact, but no one wants to make a fool of himself and be taken in; so, on the gray canvas of reality, he zestfully sketches the mere form of this illusory festival. Miserable, unshaven fathers, shaking their complaining children by the shoulders trying to make them say it has been a pleasant Sunday...little scenes everyone has seen in the corner of some trolley...people's pathetic jealousy and impatience with others' happiness.”

-The Woman In The Dunes, Kobo Abe

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“I cut myself again and again to remind myself of you.”

-Scream of the Butterfly, Acid Bath

Recommended by Red Dawn.

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“Janie is a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her all that's going to pass. But I don't want to lie to her.”

-American Beauty [movie]

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“so they went
years and years
like sisters
blanket girls
always there through that and this
there's nothing we cannot ever fix.”

-Bells For Her, Tori Amos

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“i've been looking for a savior
in these dirty streets
looking for a savior
beneath these dirty sheets.”

-Crucify, Tori Amos

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“i hurt myself today
to see if i could feel
i hurt myself you said
to try to make him feel
so i hurt myself again
to see if he'd see me
i hurt myself again
i know he never could see me.”

-Hurt (introduction to Caught a Lite Sneeze), Tori Amos

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“Pride is something we have. Vanity is something others have.”

-Anonymous

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“She was just a like a rose, beautiful, fragile and innocent, but when he hit her, when he touched her, did she wither and die away, just like when the first frost comes over and kills off all the flowers.”

-Anonymous

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“So live that you can look any man in the eye and tell him to go to hell.”

-Anonymous

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“When will people understand that words can cut as sharply as any blade, and that those cuts leave scars upon our souls.”

-Anonymous

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“You say you hate the way you are then why must you insist on making me your clone?”

-Anonymous

Recommended by Lahna.

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“I used to think I was the only one who felt things, but I really am only one infinitely small part of an aching humanity. It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would really be a gory, blood-smeared earth.”

-Go Ask Alice, Anonymous

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“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

-Apple

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“Men such as him do not have to clean up the messes they make, but we have to clean up our own messes, and theirs into the bargain. In that way they are like children, they do not have to think ahead, or worry about the consequences of what they do.”

-Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

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“The difference between a civilized man and a barbarous fiend—a madman, say—lies, perhaps, merely in a thin veneer of willed self-restraint.”

-Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

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“Reverie intrudes at intervals.

She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.

In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes, each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoiced. How they'd loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?

Sometimes she wants to put a match to him, have done with him, finish with that endless, useless longing. At the very least, daily time and the entropy of her own body should take care of it- wear her threadbare, wear her out, erase that place in her brain. But no exorcism has been enough, nor has she tried very hard at it. Exorcism is not what she wants. She wants that terrified bliss, like falling out of an airplane by mistake. She wants his famished look.

The last time she'd seen him, when they'd gone back to his room- it was like drowning: everything darkened and roared, but at the same time it was very silvery, and slow, and clear.

This is what it means, to be in thrall.”

-The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

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“The murder exists like a stone inside of her that she won't be free of, until she hoists it out by the killing. She isn't afraid as much as she is disturbingly calm. She knows it won't be hard for her. When she became a mother, she felt what an animal must feel, the deep pain calcifying into an animalistic protectiveness. It was after giving birth, holding her children, that she felt the most tender and the most capable of murder.”

-The Madam, Julianna Baggott

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“'So the loss of memory applies to the later part of your service in France, but the early part - the first six months or so - is comparatively clear?'

'Ye-es.'

Rivers sat back in his chair. 'Would you like to tell me something about that early part?'

'No.'

'But do you remember it?'

'Doesn't mean I want to talk about it.' He looked round the room. 'I don't see why it has to be like this anyway.'

'Like what?'

'All the questions from you, all the answers from me. Why can't it be both ways?'

'Look, Mr Prior, if you went to the doctor with bronchitis and he spent half the consultation telling you about his lumbago, you would not be pleased. Would you?'

'No, but if I went to my doctor in despair it might help to know he at least understood the meaning of the word.'

'Are you in despair?'

Prior sighed, ostentatiously impatient.

'You know, I talk to a lot of people who are in despair or very close to it, and my experience is that they don't care what their doctor feels. That's the whole point about despair, isn't it? That you turn it on yourself.'

'Well, all I can say is I'd rather talk to a real person than a strip of empathic wallpaper.'

Rivers smiled. 'I like that.'

Prior glared at him.”

-Regeneration, Pat Barker

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“I know you. I almost knew you as soon as I saw you on the road, coming to my door with your cook and your clown. Since then, there is no movement of yours that had not betrayed you. A pace, a glance, a turn of the head, the flash of your throat as you breathe, even your way of standing perfectly still-- they were all my spies.”

-The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

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“...there is something so awful, something so gross about watching someone who loves you struggle to believe what you both know, deep down, is partially a lie.”

-An Invisible Sign Of My Own, Aimee Bender

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“Before he wakes up I run to the bathroom to see what I look like, and I actually look pretty good. Flushed and fuckable. I go back and he's still sprawled out on the bed and I fold my body into his and think about how I want to look to him when he wakes up. I want to be sleeping in a casual sexy way, to make him want me again.

I remember, especially in high school, I was so good at this kind of fake-out. I rehearsed thoughtfulness, I appeared carefree--and how many guys did I trick? As I sat there, hair tucked behind my ear, supposedly lost in a book, thinking this exact monologue, rereading and rereading the same paragraph, waiting for them to see me and want me, caught in this image of myself as a reader. What about staring at ants, wanting to seem close to nature and whimsical? What about staring into space, wanting to seem expansive, trying to find the thoughts that would fit my self-portrait? I fooled so many guys! I was found mysterious so many times, oh that girl, we don't know what Susie thinks, and all I'm thinking is what do I look like, and all I'm thinking is that I own their thoughts.”

-Fell This Girl, Aimee Bender

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“I think of that girl I read about in the paper - the girl with the flammable skirt. She’d bought a rayon chiffon skirt, purple with wavy lines all over it. She wore it to a party and was dancing, too close to the vanilla-smelling candles, and suddenly she lit up like a pine needle torch. When the boy dancing next to her felt the heat and smelled the plasticky smell, he screamed and rolled the burning girl up in the carpet. She got third-degree burns up and down her thighs. But what I keep wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was the candles, did she think she’d done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips and the warmth of the music inside her did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?”

-The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Aimee Bender

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“The flowers need watering
the silver needs a shine.
Daughter is a magnet
drawn back to where she was last safe.
She touches the tablecloth like a talisman.
Tell me who I was. Tell me what I've become.”

-Mother Waits, Nicole Blackman

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“It's not that I literally think I'm a faerie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting.”

-Violet and Claire, Francesca Lia Block

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“We meet on the common ground of an uncommon age and share out our gifts of dark and light, good and bad, simple joy and not so simple sorrow.”

-Ray Bradbury

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