“As we grow older, it becomes difficult to just believe. It's not that we don't want to, but too much has happened and we can't.”

Now and Then [movie]

“Things will happen in your life that you can't stop. But that's no reason to shut out the world.”

Now and Then [movie]

“Maybe this is a strategy I should adopt. When my mom asks me how my thesis is going, I could answer, 'I'm learning a lot,' without extrapolating. I'm learning a lot about what it means to be addicted to television. I'm learning a lot about what it means to run your credit cards up to unmanageable levels. There is an interesting dust bunny behind the door in the bathroom. I am learning that these things don't go away by themselves, that dust bunnies need some encouragement. There is a pile of paper around my desk that almost goes up to my knees. It's like wading through a swamp to get to my computer; I lift my legs high, step over things, try not to get stuck in the muck. I am learning about the nature of stasis, how piles do not change until tripped over or physically shoved aside. I am learning the laws of physics through practical experiments. How a body that is not in motion seems to have trouble leaving her apartment. I am learning a lot.”

Welcome To My Planet...Where English Is Sometimes Spoken, Shannon Olson

“Throw your life away,
It will come back in the end
If you still believe,
But you wish not to pretend.”

Tapwater, Onesidezero Recommended by Manda.

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”

George Orwell

“When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working- bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming- all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth-of-a-second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned- reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone- one mind less, one world less.”

A Hanging, George Orwell

“Only after disaster can we be resurrected.

'It's only after you've lost everything,' Tyler says, 'that you're free to do anything.'”

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

“No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.

Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk

“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch. Look for the details. Report. Don't participate. Let Big Brother do the singing and dancing for you. Be a reporter. Be a good witness. A grateful member of the audience.”

Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

“Here in the bathroom with me are razor blades. Here is iodine to drink. Here are sleeping pills to swallow. You have a choice. Live or die.

Every breath is a choice.

Every minute is a choice.

To be or not to be.

Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice. Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.”

Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk

“There's always the chance you could die right in the middle of your life story.”

Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk

“My land is bare of chattering folk / The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke / From all my burning bridges.”

Sanctuary, Dorothy Parker

“Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.”

The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950, Cesare Pavese Recommended by Mea Culpa.

“'Is something wrong?' she said.
'Of course there is.'
'You're still alive,' she said.
'Do I deserve to be?'
Is that the question?
And if so...if so...who answers?”

Alive, Pearl Jam

“We go to so much trouble
To postpone the unavoidable
And prolong the pain of being alive.”

Priests/Paramedics, Pedro the Lion Recommended by Melissa.

“Living is entirely too time-consuming.”

Irene Peter

“I wanna go home,
Take off this uniform and leave the show,
But I'm waiting here in this cell because I have to know,
Have I been guilty all this time?”

Stop, Pink Floyd

“Sad Hamlet, with a knife?
Where do you stash your life?”

Stopped Dead, Sylvia Plath

“I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue. It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.”

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

“The only trouble was, Church, even the Catholic Church, didn't take up the whole of your life. No matter how much you knelt and prayed, you still had to eat three meals a day and have a job and live in the world.”

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

“One night she hid the pink cotton scarf from her raincoat in the pillowcase when the nurse came around to lock up her drawers and closets for the night. In the dark she had made a loop and tried to pull it tight around her throat. But always just as the air stopped coming and she felt the rushing grow louder in her ears, her hands would slacken and let go, and she would lie there panting for breath, cursing the dumb instinct in her body that fought to go on living.”

Tongues of Stone, Sylvia Plath Recommended by kalee.

“I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future. And if you have no past or future, which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

“Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I'm afraid for myself...the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain...remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. When you feel that this may be good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

“Outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness. I look down into the warm, earthy world. Into a nest of lovers' beds, baby cribs, meal tables, all the solid commerce of life in this earth, and feel apart, enclosed in a wall of glass.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath