“I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her.”

Henry and June, Anaïs Nin

“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don’t work.”

Henry and June, Anaïs Nin

“Do you know how far this has gone?
Just how damaged have I become?
When I think I can overcome
It runs even deeper

In in a dream I'm a different me
With a perfect you
We fit perfectly
And for once in my life I feel complete-
And I still want to ruin it.”

Even Deeper, Nine Inch Nails

“'If you don't fall in love, you can't get hurt.'
'But it sure is lonely out there all by yourself.'”

Now and Then [movie]

“...when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.”

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

“From the way that people have always talked about your heart being broken, it sort of seemed to be a one-time thing. Mine seemed to break all the time.”

Lullabies For Little Criminals, Heather O'Neill

“I would meet you now
and I would wish this scar
to have been given with
all the love
that never occurred between us.”

The Time Around Scars, Michael Ondaatje

“'We may be together for six months, a year. There's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be? When once they get a hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing that either of us can do for the other. If I confess they will shoot you, and if I refuse they'll shoot you just the same. Nothing I can do or say, or stop myself from saying will put off your death for more than five minutes. Neither of us will even know if the other one is alive or dead. We shall be utterly without power of any kind. The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray each one another, although that can't make the slightest difference.'

'If you mean confessing,' she said 'we shall do that, right enough. Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.'

'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal.'”

1984, George Orwell Recommended by Kaylee.

“He knelt down before her and took her hands in his

'Have you done this before?'

'Of course. Hundreds of times — well scores of times anyway'

'With Party members.'

'Yes, always with Party members.'

'With members of the Inner Party?'

'Not with those swine, no. But there's plenty that would if they got half a chance. They're not so holy as they make out.'

His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds — thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face.

'Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?'

'Yes, perfectly.'

'I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.'

'You like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?'

'I adore it.'

That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces.”

1984, George Orwell

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk

“No matter how much you think you love somebody, you'll step back when the pool of their blood edges too close.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk Recommended by Shay.

“The one you love and the one who loves you will never be the same person.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk Recommended by LibbyO.

“No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way.”

Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

“By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady make a note of this:
One of you is lying.”

Unfortunate Coincidence, Dorothy Parker

“There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.”

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

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

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

“We fuck,
In sadness,
A cold frustration.
Then we're fine,
For a while,
Our hearts adjacent.”

Bad Patient, Piano Magic

“And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, they way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.”

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.

It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction - every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour.”

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

“What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him. May he keep so.”

Three Women; A Poem For Three Voices, Sylvia Plath

“Let's face it, I am in danger of wanting my personal absolute to be a demigod of a man, and as there aren't many around, I often unconsciously manufacture my own. And then, I retreat and revel in poetry and literature where the reward value is tangible and accepted. I really do not think deeply, really deeply. I want a romantic nonexistent hero.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

“Love is an illusion, but I would willingly fall for it if I could believe in it. Now everything seems far and sad and cold, like a piece of shale at the bottom of a canyon -- or warm and near and unthinking, like a pink dogwood.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

“I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beauty's breath ?”

Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poem, Edgar Allan Poe

“For the possession of what we love is an even greater joy than love itself. Very often, those who conceal this possession from the world do so only from the fear that the beloved object may be taken from them. And their happiness is diminished by this prudent reticence.”

The Captive, Marcel Proust

“Sometimes in growing as an individual you may grow away from the person that you love.”

Queer As Folk [television show] Recommended by Angela J.