By Category: Other

“Far or forgot to me is near,
Shadow and sunlight are the same,
The vanished gods to me appear,
And one to me are shame and fame.”

-Brahma, Ralph Waldo Emerson

~

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness,' 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feelings. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of morality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.'”

-Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

~

“This is how it went with the Obscure Object. A cigarette in bed was the tombstone marking each day's end and the reed through which she breathed herself back to life each morning. You've heard of installation artists? Well, the Object was an exhalation artist. She had a whole repertoire. There was the Sidewinder, where she politely funneled smoke away from the person she was talking to out the corner of her mouth. There was the Geyser when she was angry. There was the Dragon Lady, featuring a plume from each nostril. There was the French Recycle, where she let smoke out her mouth only to inhale it back through her nose. And there was the Swallow. The Swallow was reserved for crisis situations.”

-Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

~

“She is perfect in that fucked up way
That all the magazines seem to want to glorify these days.”

-Amphetamine, Everclear

Recommended by Ashley.

~

“You walk around oblivious to everything
You wear that party dress and black mascara
Like you're queen for the day.”

-Normal Like You, Everclear

Recommended by Ashley.

~

“Loopy says he likes it up on top
He prays to god and he hopes like hell
That the pretty machine
They will never fail
He has no fear
He doesn't really even have the time
He knows that the world is in love
With the pretty machine
The one hit wonder
He likes the big time
He wants to live the kind of life
That will make the folks back home scream, bitch, and whine
He knows if he ever even gets to try
He will bite down hard to make the monster cry
He knows if he ever even gets a chance
He'd sell his soul to make the monster dance
He knows if he ever even gets to play
He will stomp like god to make the monster say
They can't hurt you unless you let them
They cannot hurt you unless you let them.”

-One Hit Wonder, Everclear

Recommended by Ashley.

~

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.”

-As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

~

“There was no reality to pain when it left
one, though while it held one fast all other realities failed.”

-Rachel Field

~

“...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fullness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.”

-Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

~

“Will you be my anchor
When there is no-one around to hold me down
Will you be my anchor
I know you're not the answer.”

-Angel At My Table, The Frames

Recommended by Ronan.

~

“I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

-Robert Frost

~

“You say I have no power? Perhaps you speak truly...

But - you say that dreams have no power here? Tell me, Lucifer Morningstar, ask yourselves, all of you... what power would hell have if those here imprisoned were not able to dream of heaven?”

-A Hope in Hell (The Sandman #4), Neil Gaiman

~

“'I don't know about the girl in the books,' says the professor, 'but remaining behind would also have meant that she was available to identify her brothers' and her little sister's bodies. There were a lot of people dead in that crash. I was taken to a nearby school--it was the first day of term, and they had taken the bodies there. My older brother looked okay. Like he was asleep. The other two were a bit messier.'

'I suppose Susan would have seen their bodies, and thought, they're on holidays now. The perfect school holidays. Romping in meadows with talking animals, world without end.'

'She might have done. I remember thinking what a great deal of damage a train can do, when it hits another train, to the people who were traveling. I suppose you've never had to identify a body, dear?'

'No.'

'That's a blessing. I remember looking at them and thinking, What if I'm wrong, what if it's not him after all? My younger brother was decapitated, you know. A god who would punish me for liking nylons and parties by making me walk through that school dining room, with the flies, to identify Ed, well . . . he's enjoying himself a bit too much, isn't he? Like a cat, getting the last ounce of enjoyment out of a mouse.'”

-The Problem of Susan, Neil Gaiman

~

“And people ask,
does Despair despair,
does Dream dream,
does Desire desire?

It is simpler than that.
He is Dream.
It is Desire.
She is Depair.
Take away the despair and there is nothing left.”

-The Sandman - Endless Nights, Neil Gaiman

~

“A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

~

“I smoke your brand of cigarettes
And pray that you might give me a call
I lie around in bed all day just staring at the walls
Hanging round bars at night wishing I had never been born
And give myself to anyone who wants to take me home.”

-Cup Of Coffee, Garbage

Recommended by nikola.sydney.

~

“Sleeping with ghosts
It's such a lonely experience
The stars are out tonight
Only they can hear you breathing.”

-So Like A Rose, Garbage

Recommended by nikola.sydney.

~

“You know what my number one fantasy used to be? I used to think about one day... just not telling anyone and going off to some random place. And I'd disappear... and they'd never see me again...”

-Ghost World [movie]

~

“He'd been numb a long time, years. All his nights down Ninsei, his nights with Linda, numb in bed and numb at the cold sweating center of every drug deal. But now he'd found this warm thing, this chip of murder. Meat, some part of him said. It's the meat talking, ignore it.”

-Neuromancer, William Gibson

~

“last time I saw you was the hospital
pale skull protruding under ashen skin
blue veined unconscious girl
in an oxygen tent
the war in Spain has ended long ago
Aunt Rose.”

-To Aunt Rose, Allen Ginsberg

~

“Maybe everyone out there is a liar. And maybe the whole world is stupid, and ignorant. But I'd rather be in it. I'd rather be fucking in it, than down here with you.”

-Girl, Interrupted [movie]

~

“broken locks and bruised knees and borrowed lip gloss and rain on the streets.”

-The Torn Skirt, Rebecca Godfrey

Recommended by hollis.

~

“This is thy world! a world! alas!
And dost thou ask why heaves thy heart.”

-Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

~

“And I wonder where these dreams go
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screaming?
No one's listening anyway.”

-Acoustic #3, Goo Goo Dolls

~

“Scars are souvenirs you never knew.”

-Name, Goo Goo Dolls

Recommended by Jena.

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