“Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn with the knowledge they carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them.”

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

“She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why.... Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen often.”

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

“Those who don't build must burn.”

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

“I came to understand that these memories were my salvation. I no longer wanted to know why I had done such things if it meant I wouldn't want to do them anymore. I put my notebooks aside forever. I was different, and that was all. I had always know I was different; I could not trudge through life contentedly chewing whatever cud I found in my mouth, as those around me seemed to do.”

Exquisite Corpse, Poppy Z. Brite Recommended by Ghost.

“If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day.”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliffe's miseries, and I watched and felt from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not be seen part of it. My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes trees. My love for Heathcliffe resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliffe! He's always, always in my mind: not a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and-”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

“I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with.

The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother - 'Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat.

Thank God that I have daughters only, and no sons.”

March, Geraldine Brooks

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.”

Woman, Charles Bukowski

“Women: I liked the colors of their clothing; the way they walked; the cruelty in some faces; now and then the almost pure beauty in another face, totally and enchantingly female. They had it over us: they planned much better and were better organized. While men were watching professional football or drinking beer or bowling, they, the women, were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding--whether to accept us, discard us, exchange us, kill us or whether simply to leave us. In the end it hardly mattered; no matter what they did, we ended up lonely and insane.”

Woman, Charles Bukowski

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

“The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“Tracy, the leader of the CDH group, looks at me with eyes that seem to belong to someone three times her age. It's something beyond wisdom, all the way to insanity and back. It's like her eyes are scarred from all the things she's seen.”

Dry, Augusten Burroughs

“All the way home in the car, I stared at my mother's new face. Every few miles she would comment, 'What a lovely tree,' or 'That is a beautiful lawn.' To the untrained eye, my mother might have appeared to be normal. But I knew better. I could see the wildness behind her eyes, crouching, hiding. I could see the tiny hint of smile at the corners of her mouth that said, I'll fool you all.”

Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

“A junky runs on junk time. When his junk is cut off, the clock runs down and stops. All he can do is hang on and wait for non-junk time to start.”

Junkie, William S. Burroughs

“Junkies have no interest in sex and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of junk. They go around looking younger for a few days. Then they need more.”

Just One Fix, William S. Burroughs

“The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to the product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.”

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear. And, from this point of view, death is no more worthy of respect than Nero or the inspector at my local police station.”

Notebooks 1935-1951, Albert Camus

“...How poor in invention men are! They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic and vulgar motives to your action.”

The Fall, Albert Camus

“Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came the human beings, they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate - for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.”

The Fall, Albert Camus

“I found it difficult to answer his question. I probably loved mother quite a lot, but that didn't mean anything. To a certain extent all normal people sometimes wished their loved ones were dead. Here the lawyer interrupted me, looking very flustered. He made me promise not to say that at the hearing.”

The Outsider, Albert Camus

“What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.”

Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote

“His son was long-necked and delicate. He was light, airy, made from the quills of a bird. He was white and frail. He had a triangular face, a thin nose, archer's-bow lips, a fine pointed chin. The eyes were so clean and unprotected, like freshly peeled fruit. It was a face that trusted you completely, made you light in the heart at the very moment it placed on you the full weight of responsibility for its protection. Not even the red hair, that frizzy nest which grew outwards, horizontal like a windblown tree in an Italianate painting, this hair did not suggest anything as self-protective as 'temper'.

He should not have hit him.”

Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

“All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.”

Reflections on Life, Alexis Carrel

“She was too thin for a Titian or a Renoir but she contrived a pale, smug Cranach Venus with a bit of net curtain would round her head and the necklace of cultured pearls they gave her when she was confirmed at her throat. After she read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, she secretly picked forget-me-nots and stuck them in her pubic hair.”

The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter