“Irony is a gift of the gods, the most subtle of all the modes of speech. It is an armour and a weapon; it is a philosophy and perpetual entertainment; it is food for the hungry of wit and drink to those thirsting for laughter. How much more elegant is it to slay your foe with the roses of irony than to massacre him with the axes of sarcasm or to belabour him with the bludgeons of invective. And the adept in irony enjoys its use when he alone is aware of his meaning, and he sniggers up his sleeve to see all and sundry, chained to their obtuseness, take him seriously.”

Mrs. Craddock, W. Somerset Maugham

“Nothing is more tedious than to talk with persons who treat your most ordinary remarks as startling paradoxes; and Edward suffered likewise from that passion for argument which is the bad talker's substitute for conversation. People who cannot talk are always proud of their dialectic; they want to modify your most obvious statements, and if you do no more than observe that the day is fine insist on arguing it out. Miss Ley's opinion on the subject was that no woman under forty was worth talking to at all, and a man only if he was an attentive listener.”

Mrs. Craddock, W. Somerset Maugham

“I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty
Oh and weightless then maybe
I'll find some peace tonight.”

Angel, Sarah McLachlan

“Listen as the wind blows
from across the great divide
Voices trapped in yearning
memories trapped in time
The night is my companion
and solitude my guide
Would I spend forever here
and not be satisfied.”

Posession, Sarah McLachlan Recommended by Ashley.

“A chalk outline is slowly being drawn around common sense and most Americans can't even identify the victim”

The Death of Common Sense, Dennis Miller

“I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me-or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed-doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and everything you call yours. Show me your father, with his kites, his race horses, his free passes for the opera: I will eat them all, swallow them alive. Where is the chair you sit in, where is your favorite comb, your toothbrush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp. You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me-I want to lick the flesh from her bones.”

Sexus, Henry Miller

“If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.”

The Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

“I've never wanted something rational.”

Head Over Feet, Alanis Morissette Recommended by Jaine.

“And now when I see her searching the garbage - for what? The thing we assassinated? I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late.”

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

“I'm just dramatically, supernaturally, non-sexual.”

Melody Maker, Morrissey

“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.”

Edvard Munch

“Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.”

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami

“I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing. ”

Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami Recommended by Shay.

“Well let's go back to the middle of the day that starts it all
I can't begin to let you know just what I'm feeling
And now the red ones make me fly
And the blue ones help me fall
And I think I'll blow my brains against the ceiling
And as the fragments of my skull begin to fall
Fall on your tongue like pixie dust just think happy thoughts

And we'll fly home
We'll fly home
You and I
We'll fly home.”

Headfirst For Halos, My Chemical Romance Recommended by Nikki.

“You're running after something that you'll never kill.”

Thank You For the Venom, My Chemical Romance Recommended by Caitie.

“Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.”

Lik, Vladimir Nabokov

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov

“As he listened to her, he lightly tapped the back of his boots with his riding crop. He turned toward his soldiers and gave them a good dressing down. Lucile realised he was ordering them to get the house back in order, to fix what had been broken, to polish the floors and the furniture. His voice, when he spoke German, especially with that commanding tone, took on a sharp, resonant quality. Hearing it gave Lucile the same pleasure that a slightly rough kiss might - the kind of kiss that ends with a little bite.”

Suite Francaise, Irène Némirovsky

“(Je suis le Ténébreux, - le Veuf, - l'Inconsolé, Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la Tour abolie)

I am the man of shadow, the widowed, the unconsoled, the Prince of Aquitaine at the ruined tower.”

El Desdichado, Gérard de Nerval

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

The Woman In The Dunes, James D. Nicoll

“Creation - that is the great redemption from suffering, and life's becoming light. But that the creator may be, much suffering itself is needed and much change.

Yes, there must be much bitter dying in your life, you creators! Thus you are advocates and justifiers of all impermanence.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“He who cannot obey himself is commanded...The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death...And life itself confided this secret to me: 'Behold,' it said, 'I am that which must always overcome itself.'...Indeed, the truth was not hit by him who shot at it with the word of the 'will to existence': that will does not exist. For, what does not exist cannot will; but what is in existence, how could that still want existence? Only where there is life is there also will: not will to life but—thus I teach you—will to power... And whoever must be a creator in good and evil, verily, he must first be an annihilator and break values. Thus the highest evil belongs to the highest goodness: but this is creative.”

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.”

The Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Anaïs Nin

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

The Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Anaïs Nin

“All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.”

Under The Glass Bell, Anaïs Nin