“Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could.”

The Double Image, Anne Sexton

“...Ursula begins penciling in her own face, emphasizing and even exaggerating those features of which she was ashamed as a teenager and of which she now makes a point of being proud: the ridge on which her eyebrows are set, her muscular jawline, the elongated slope between her nose and her upper lip. It's important to have these features, she thinks, for the same reason it's important to live in a cramped apartment with a lumpy futon. With a face like this, in a place like that, she's never in danger of feeling glamorous. She can sit on a pile of moldy pillows on the floor of her windowless living room, so dark the ceiling lamp needs to be on in the middle of the day, and she can pull up the hem of her nightshirt, as she did this afternoon, and look down at her thighs and not feel sexy, not feel attractive at all, feel quite unattractive, in fact, whereas if she were on a white couch in a spacious room with oversized windows and sunlight warming her thighs, who knows? She might look at those legs and think of those legs' being looked at and think of herself as being sexy and even glamorous, too. Because glamour is a matter of context. And white, empty space, as she learned from her pile of out-of-date library books, is the number-one glamour cue in advertisements. Anything placed on a white, empty background is instantly glamorized, be it a perfume bottle, a watch, a hair-care product, an upscale toothpaste, or a woman's body. This was what Ivy wanted, white space, nothing but white and space. Ursula marveled at all that white space when she went to break the lease on her sister's apartment, too white and spacious for Ursula herself to afford. A white couch, a bed with white sheets, a small white table and white chairs, symmetrically placed amid four white walls: Ivy aspired to the absolute zero of glamour. Her ideal was to have no context at all, only weightlessly to crowd-surf on an endless sea of strangers who would hold, fondle, and pass along every facet of her glamorous existence. A kind of utterly passive immortality.”

The Savage Girl, Alex Shaker

“Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.”

Sonnet 57, William Shakespeare

“This day could be the worst one yet
I just won't relax I can't catch my breath
Because I'm sick and tired of you'll be fine
Well how do you know, can you read minds

[...]

Have you ever felt lost inside so unloved within that you almost die
Have you ever stepped out of the light and realized there's a stranger inside.”

Stranger Inside, Shinedown

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”

Scheherazade, Richard Siken

“You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for.”

You Are Jeff, Richard Siken

“Couldn't care less if I died right now
Who am I? I don't know you tell me
You seem to know everything else.”

No Association

“To be loved, you have to be nice to people every day but to be hated, you don't have to do squat.”

The Simpsons [television show]

“I need someone to ease my mind - but sometimes a someone is so hard to find.”

In The Arms Of Sleep, Smashing Pumpkins

“In the air it hung that she was dull razors
And I said, 'I wanna fill you up, I wanna break you, I wanna give you up.'”

XYU, Smashing Pumpkins Recommended by Emily.

“Drink up baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make
People you've been before that you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still.”

Between The Bars, Elliott Smith

“They're waking you up to close the bar
The street's wet you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender's singing Clementine
While he's turning around the open sign
Dreadful sorry Clementine
Though you're still her man
It seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing's wrong
What if she thinks so but just didn't say so?
You drank yourself into slo-mo
Made an angel in the snow
Anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of yr mind
Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Oh my darling Clementine
Dreadful sorry Clementine.”

Clementine, Elliott Smith

“i'll tell you why i don't
want to know where you are
i got a joke i been dying to tell you
a silent kid is looking down the barrel
to make the noise that i kept so quiet
i kept it from you, pitseleh

i'm not what's missing from your life now
i could never be the puzzle pieces
they say that god makes problems
just to see what you can stand
before you do as the devil pleases
and give up the thing you love
but no one deserves it

the first time i saw you
i knew it would never last
i'm not half what i wish i was
i'm so angry, i don't think it'll ever pass
and i was bad news for you, just because
i never meant to hurt you.”

Pitseleh, Elliott Smith

“You're everybody's second home
Always trying to get me alone
An easy way to lose it all
Always there when all else fails
Over by the west side rails

But I don't really need that now
I never really did anyhow
I only really needed alcohol
Something that'll treat me okay
And wouldn't say the things you'd say

Please turn out the light
I get a sick confusion headache trying to figure out who's right

Dreaming on the silver strand
Waking up to plainclothes man
You little bastard, little boy in blue
Someone's gonna get to you
And fuck up everything you do

He's so unhappy inside
He's serious with everyone
And he thinks he'll win you with his angry kiss
Acting like he has no needs
Wanting you to watch him bleed

Made for each other bet you pay me any mind
Just goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
But I don't know
I don't think so...

There's something that I'll tell you now
Now that no one else is around
The sort of lesson that I learned from you
Not quite the way you planned
But I know you'll understand

Someone takes a photograph
A picture while their sweetheart laughs
A perfect moment in a flash of light
Counting back from 3 to 1
That's exactly what you've done

And I'm so unsurprised
I remember, I remember why I dream in black & white

Goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
But I don't know
I don't think so
I don't think so...”

Plainclothes Man, Elliott Smith

“Parading around town with her open wounds
Saying: 'Hush now, don't tell a soul -
Any charity will come too soon,
I can get through this on my own.'
And she's recruiting sympathy like it's an army
And as the front lines fall, she brings new lines up
She says: 'keep on your tip-toes, boys, my tissue's scarring,'
Collecting pity like change in a cup ”

This Ship, Martina Sorbara Recommended by Shay.

“And every little thing about this tells me
Nothing out there is ever gonna help me
All these words that I hear spoken just promises broken now.”

Promises Broken, Soul Asylum Recommended by Len.

“don't tell your mother that you are afraid
don't tell your lover that your heart might break
don't tell your gods you no longer believe
because as soon as you say it out loud they will leave you.”

Bon Idée, Regina Spektor

“Fade in, start the scene
Enter beautiful girl
But things are not what they seem
As we stand at the edge of the world

"Excuse me, sir,
But I have plans to die tonight
Oh, and you are directly in my way
And I bet you're gonna say it's not right"
My reply:
"Excuse me, miss
But do you have the slightest clue
Of exactly what you just said to me
And exactly who you're talking to?"

She said, "I don't care, you don't even know me"
I said, "I know but I'd like to change that soon, hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

"You make it sound so easy to be alive
But tell me, how am I supposed to seize this day
When everything inside me has died?"
My reply:
"Trust me, girl
I know your legs are pleading to leap
But I offer you this easy choice-
Instead of dying, living with me"

She said, "Are you crazy? You don't even know me."
I said, "I know, but I'd like to change that soon hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

I would be lying if I said that things would never get rough
And all this cliche motivation, it could never be enough
I could stand here all night trying to convince you
But what good would that do?
My offer stands, and you must choose

"All right, you win, but I only give you one night
To prove yourself to be better than my attempt at flight
I swear to god if you hurt me I will leap
I will toss myself from these very cliffs
And you'll never see it coming"
"Settle, precious, I know what you're going through
Just ten minutes before you got here I was gonna jump too"

Yeah we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets”

Self-Conclusion, The Spill Canvas Recommended by Ray.

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.

And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous. ”

East Of Eden, John Steinbeck

“The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?”

Truth Of Intercourse, Robert Louis Stevenson

“We have just enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love one another.”

Thoughts On Various Subjects, Jonathan Swift

“Sweet Ma tried to shape my mind, pounding it like dumpling dough. And the more she tried, the more I became like my mother, so she said. I was greedy, she warned, and could not fill my heart with enough pleasure, my stomach with enough contentment, my body with enough sleep. I was like a rice basket with a rat hole at the bottom, and thus could not be satisfied and overflow, nor could I be filled. I would never know the full depth and breadth of love, beauty, or happiness. She said it like a curse.

Because of her criticism, I acted as if I were even more deficient in feeling, particularly toward her. I found that a blank face and a bland heart were the very things that made Sweet Ma's eyebrows bulge to bursting. My reasoning was this: How could I be wounded when I didn't care? In time, I felt I was growing stronger and stronger. My legs no longer buckled, and I learned to hide from pain. I hid my deepest feelings so well I forgot where I had placed them.”

Saving Fish From Drowning, Amy Tan

“I almost aborted (my daughter), though. When I found out I was pregnant, I was furious. ...referred to (it) as my 'growing resentment' and I dragged M. down to the clinic so he would have to suffer through his too.”

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

“The next night, I lay straight on the bed next to him.... still didn't touch me ...the next night I took off my gown... He was scared and turned his face. He had no desire for me, but it was his fear that made me think he had no desire for any women. .. After more months had passed (his mom said) My son says he’s planted enough seeds for thousands of grandchildren. .. It must be you doing something wrong....she confined me to the bed so that her grandchildren's seeds would not spill out so easily.”

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

“I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
the signal moon is zero in their voids.”

I See The Boys Of Summer, Dylan Thomas