“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen

“'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]

“I don't want to see a lot of people, I don't think they want to see a lot of me.”

Now and Then [movie]

“For the most part they carried themselves with a poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die.”

The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien

“Is anybody even there
who doesn't just pretend to care
This time I need to know - are you there?
Does anybody think they can
Begin to even understand
This time I need to know - are you there?”

Are You There?, Oleander Recommended by elias.

“Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

1984, George Orwell

“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

“Once, when I was seven or eight, my mother said to me, as we sat on the last seat but one on the bus to the clinic, or the shoe shop, that while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they would go on waiting for you silently and humbly on their shelf. They would wait for ten years. They wouldn't complain. One night, when you suddenly needed a book, even at three in the morning, even if it was a book you had abandoned and erased from your heart for years and years, it would never disappoint you, it would come down from its shelf and keep you company in your moment of need. It would not try to get its own back or make excuses or ask itself if it was worth its while or if you deserved it or if you still suited each other, it would come at once as soon as you asked. A book would never let you down.”

A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz

“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

“Tyler says I'm nowhere near hitting the bottom, yet. And if I don't fall all the way, I can't be saved. Jesus did it with his crucifixion thing. I shouldn't just abandon money and property and knowledge. This isn't just a weekend retreat. I should run from self-improvement, and I should be running toward disaster. I can't just play it safe anymore.”

Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

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

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk Recommended by LibbyO.

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk

“Pity without the desire to help is what I call narcissism.”

Patrick

“Even in the eyes that do not look at me, I suspect the mockery I consider natural, directed toward the inelegant exception that I am in a world of people who do things and enjoy themselves, and in the supposed depth of physiognomies that pass by the mocking laughter aimed at the timid gesticulation of my life, a consciousness of my life that I impose and interpose ”

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa Recommended by Shay.

“The presence of another person - of any person whatsoever - instantly slows down my thinking, and while for a normal man contact with others is a stimulus to spoken expression and wit, for me it is a counterstimulus, if this compound word be linguistically permissible. When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Yes, talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial, and in them intelligence gleams like an image in a mirror.

The mere thought of having to enter into contact with someone else makes me nervous. A simple invitation to have dinner with a friend produces an anguish in me that's hard to define. The idea of any social obligation whatsoever - attending a funeral, dealing with someone about an office matter, going to the station to wait for someone I know or don't know - the very idea disturbs my thoughts for an entire day, and sometimes I even start worrying the night before, so that I sleep badly. When it takes place, the dreaded encounter is utterly insignificant, justifying none of my anxiety, but next time is no different: I never learn to learn.”

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

“You might tell yourself that candor is the foundation of a relationship, but even that would be untrue. You are far more likely to lie to yourself, or your loved one, if you think it will keep the pain at bay.”

Vanishing Act, Jodi Picoult

“Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all
Together we stand, divided we fall.”

Hey You, Pink Floyd

“From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What am I to make of these contradictions?
I wear white cuffs, I bow.”

An Appearance, Sylvia Plath

“I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

Mad Girl's Love Song, Sylvia Plath

“They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.”

The Bee Meeting, Sylvia Plath

“'I can't dance.'

'You don't have to dance. I'll do the dancing.'

Marco hooked an arm around my waist and jerked me up against his dazzling white suit. Then he said, 'Pretend you are drowning.'

I shut my eyes, and the music broke over me like a rainstorm. Marco's leg slid forward against mine and my leg slid back and I seemed to be riveted to him, limb for limb, moving as he moved, without any will or knowledge of my own, and after a while I thought, 'It doesn't take two to dance, it only takes one,' and I let myself blow and bend like a tree in the wind.”

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

“How could this George Bakewell have become a doctor so suddenly? I wondered. He didn't really know me, either. He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like.

I turned my face to the wall.

'Get out,' I said. 'Get the hell out and don't come back.'”

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

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”

Two Campers In Cloud Country, Sylvia Plath

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter--they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship--but the loneliness of the soul in it's appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”

Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath