“I knew him well enough not to mourn his passing.”

Interview With The Vampire [movie]

“In this dirty-minded world, you are either somebody's wife or somebody's whore- or fast on your way to becoming one or the other.”

The World According to Garp, John Irving

“Will you love me any less if I hurt you any more.”

Girlscout, Jack Off Jill Recommended by ces xxx.

“When I am queen I will insist with perfect scars upon my wrists
that everything you once held dear is taken away from you.”

When I Am Queen, Jack Off Jill Recommended by Ashley.

“To this latter way, the morbid-minded way, as we might call it, healthy-mindedness pure and simple seems unspeakably blind and shallow.”

Varieties of Religious Experience, William James

“Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.”

Bruno Jasienski (Yasensky)

“I saw you dancing out the ocean
Running fast along the sand
A spirit born of earth and water
Fire flying from your hands.”

The One, Elton John

“'What is your name?' she asked.

The youth ignored her, lowering his eyelids against the sun. She repeated her question. Again he ignored her, so she touched his arm, and he turned his head and looked at her, suddenly back from his own world, his eyes wary, half afraid. But he saw no anger in her; only the stains of tears, and an awful despair. His face changed, and a look of profound sorrow and compassion came over him. Very slowly he lifted his hand and wiped the tears from her cheeks. No other man could have touched her that morning; but the mad youth, with his extraordinary tenderness, gave such a depth of consolation that she found herself leaning her cheek against his hand, and sobbing. He wept with her, and there wove between them an understanding, a unity deep and poignant and powerful.”

The Raging Quiet, Sherryl Jordan

“...I stood by the railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.

Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.

Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”

Dubliners, James Joyce

“'Because I have to fast, I can't help it,' said the hunger artist. 'What a fellow you are,' said the overseer,'and why can't you help it?' 'Because,'said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and speaking, with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer's ear, so that no syllable might be lost, 'because I couldn't find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.'”

A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka

“And you have the same power to fascinate him, something a girl’s not supposed to acknowledge, for this particular expression of power makes her, in popular parlance, a prick tease (the more equivalent of, say, scab labor). But being able to capture his focus so completely works on you like a drug, and you’re blighted by the power of it. You can hold his entire being rapt for as long as you care to. You can feel his eyes on you, almost feeding off your form and movements. Even stepping from his car for a movie, you catch him staring at the curve of your calf. Or in the deep cauldron of the theater, he pinches your small wrist as if measuring it, turning it in his hands in a kind of wonder till you feel airy-boned as a bird.”

Cherry, Mary Karr

“No one in the world needs me...no one ever will....”

Phantom, Susan Kay

“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match.”

Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

“What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”

On The Road, Jack Kerouac

“Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.”

The Stand, Stephen King

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh because you are all the same!”

Daniel Knode Recommended by saskatchewanpirate.

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy. Avenarius is playing a game, and for him the game is the only thing of importance in a world without importance. But he knows that his game will not make anyone laugh. When he outlined his proposal to the ecologists, he had no intention of amusing anyone. He only wished to amuse himself. I said, 'You play with the world like a melancholy child who has no little brother.'”

Immortality, Milan Kundera

“An ugly woman hopes to gain something from the luster of her pretty friend; a pretty woman, for her part; hopes that she will stand out more lustrously against the background of the ugly woman; and for us it follows from this that our friendship is subjected to continuous trials.”

Laughable Loves, Milan Kundera

“And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.”

The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting , Milan Kundera

“When one woman strikes at the heart of another she seldom misses, and the wound is invariably fatal.”

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

“It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Annarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren't beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me...But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, and they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can't always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn't enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Annares, nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free--possessing nothing, they are free. And you, the possessors, are the possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes--the wall, the wall!”

The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin

“Let me be the only one
To keep you from the cold.
Now the floor of heav'n is laid,
Its stars of brightest glow.
They shine for you.
They shine for you.
They burn for all to see.
Come into these arms again
And set this spirit free.”

Love Song For A Vampire, Annie Lennox

“..It's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, they don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.”

That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis

“I am just a fashion accessory
People send postcards
And they all hope I'm feeling well
I retreat into self-pity, it's so easy
Where they patronise my misery.”

La Tristesse Durera, Manic Street Preachers Recommended by Shay.