By Category: Quotes

“The butterflies don't ever stop and time does not exist in such a dark place.”

-Her Delicate Yearning, A Long Winter

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“Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel.”

-Edward Abbey

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“Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.”

-Edward Abbey

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“It only happened in novels or movies that summer was filled with dazzling sun. What existed in reality were humble, small-town Sundays...a man taking his snooze under the political columns of a newspaper, enveloped in gunsmoke...canned juices and thermos jugs with magnetized caps...boats for hire, fifty cents an hour - queue up here...foaming beaches with the leaden scum of dead fish...and then, at the end, a jam-packed trolley rickety with fatigue. Everyone knows this is fact, but no one wants to make a fool of himself and be taken in; so, on the gray canvas of reality, he zestfully sketches the mere form of this illusory festival. Miserable, unshaven fathers, shaking their complaining children by the shoulders trying to make them say it has been a pleasant Sunday...little scenes everyone has seen in the corner of some trolley...people's pathetic jealousy and impatience with others' happiness.”

-The Woman In The Dunes, Kobo Abe

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“Life dries cold beneath the dead soul lights
When death sleeps, it dreams of you.”

-Dead Girl, Acid Bath

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“I cut myself again and again to remind myself of you.”

-Scream of the Butterfly, Acid Bath

Recommended by Red Dawn.

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“Anything that happens happens, anything that in happening causes something else to happen causes something else to happen, and anything that in happening causes itself to happen again, happens again. Although not necessarily in chronological order.”

-The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams

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“Visions that can change the world trapped inside an ordinary girl
She looks just like me too afraid to dream out loud.”

-Never Give Up, Yolanda Adams

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“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”

-Stella Adler

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“The injuries we do and those we suffer are seldom weighed in the same scales.”

-Aesop

Recommended by Mea Culpa.

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“Hung in your room, swaying, hoping only that you'll see.
All by myself, I'm alone in such poor company.
The deeper I think, the deeper I seem to sink,
I can't stop the insects that are feeding,
pull the needles from beneath my skin.
I broke myself, shattered, tied a bow around every piece.
You'll love the eyes.
Have they always shown so vacantly?
The more I show the less you'll want to know.
I can't stop the insects that are feeding,
pull the needles from beneath my skin.
Now I'm on display.
I am becoming.
Hurt myself today.
It's all for you.
Do you like, do you like, what I'm becoming?
Cut myself today.
It's all for you.
I part the night, flashing, approaching as I watch you flee.
Pushed through your panes.
Seems I've landed quite uncomfortably.
But as I pass through souls of broken glass
I can't stop the insects that are feeding.
Pull the needles from beneath my skin.
Please don't ask me just what I think, trust me,
you don't want to know.
Please don't ask me to open up, trust me, trust me,
'cause I can't.”

-The Last Kiss, AFI

Recommended by jes.

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“Drink the madness,
smoke so coy.
Smile injection.
Serum of a will destroyed.”

-The Nephilim, AFI

Recommended by saskatchewanpirate.

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“Smiling is only a symptom of happiness and can be faked. Do not assume that everybody who smiles is happiness.”

-Jessica Albert

Recommended by Rosie.

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“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”

-The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom

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“In the books I read the sinners are always more interesting than the saints, and in real life good people are dismally dull. I've no desire to be wicked, but I do want to be happy. A short life and a gay one for me and I'm willing to pay for my pleasure if it is necessary.”

-A Long Fatal Love Chase, Louisa May Alcott

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“Thus the unfamiliar, the outré, the monstrous, became familiarized - a kind of joke, a child's bogeyman, a cultural reference. 'Ordinary life' is an obsessive habit: something which must continue, even in the midst of war or catastrophe. Women in cities devastated by earthquake, their houses in ruin, still peg out their washing to dry in the sun.”

-The Eye Opener, Brian Aldiss

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“Sometimes in my fantasies, the kind that hit you in broad daylight, riding the subway, I have imagined being a dutiful wife, my life perfect as a bud opening in the cool monsoon winds, then blossoming on its stalk on the gulmohar tree, petals dark red, falling onto the rich soil outside my mother's house in Tiruvella. In the inner life coiled within me, I have sometimes longed to be a bud on a tree, blooming in due season, the tree trunk well rooted in a sweet, perpetual place. But everything I think of is filled with ghosts, even this longing. This imagined past--what never was--is a choke hold.”

-Fault Lines, Meena Alexander

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“Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been missed.”

-Inferno, Dante Alighieri

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“Per me si va ne la città dolente,
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,
per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
fecemi la divina podestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

(Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eternal woe; through me is the way among the lost people. Justice moved my lofty maker: the divine Power, the supreme Wisdom and the primal Love made me. Before me were no things created, unless eternal, and I eternal last. Leave every hope, ye who enter!)”

-Inferno, Dante Alighieri

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“There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.”

-Inferno, Dante Alighieri

Recommended by Holly.

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“(In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova.)

In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: 'Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life'.”

-La Vita Nuova, Dante Alighieri

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“Even Christ himself would cringe
at the sight of your scars.”

-Cringe, Alkaline Trio

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“Got the scars to remind me
Watched the clocks go around
I've walked myself through some days
That have put me where I am

In another time
In another place
All things might have been in place
But for now I'm finding myself -- up here standing on a rooftop -- screaming
'Hey World! Are you listening,
Listening to me?
I'm here & I'm hurting
To begin again!'

It's another time, it's another place
We are making more old days
But for now I'm finding myself -- out here standing on my doorstep -- screaming
'Hey World! Are you listening,
Listening to me?
I'm here & I'm hurting
To begin again!'
'Hey World! I'm ready to listen -ready to listen
And learn something new
I'm here & I'm willing
To get myself through'”

-Rooftops, Alkaline Trio

Recommended by Abby.

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“She kissed me gentle, kissed me slow, kissed me like Grace Kelly, a porcelain princess, a lace-curtain lesbian.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life.... Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.”

-Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Dorothy Allison

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“And I've been through many strange confusions
Splitting myself into too many faces
Now the mirror is broken, I can see the worms behind.”

-Apollo, Alphaville

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