“Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand,
Vanished from my hand,
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping.
My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet,
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.”

Mr Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan Recommended by Shay.

“If you take someone's thoughts and feelings away, bit by bit, consistently, they then have nothing left except some gritty, gnawing, shitty little instinct, down there, somewhere, worming around in the gut, but so far down, so hidden, it's impossible to find.”

Martha Barnes, David Edgar

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

Albert Einstein

“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”

The Cocktail Party, T.S. Eliot Recommended by Meghan.

“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”

The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot

“...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this and I have countless times, in just about every act I've committed and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing...”

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

“When one is invisible he finds such problems as good and evil, honesty and dishonesty, of such shifting shapes that he confuses one with the other, depending upon who happens to be looking through him at the time. Well, now I've been trying to look through myself, and there's risk in it. I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied--not even I. On the other hand, I've never been more loved and appreciated than when I tried to 'justify' and affirm someone's mistaken beliefs; or when I've tried to give my friends the incorrect, absurd answers they wished to hear.”

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

“I'm a soldier, these shoulders hold up so much
They won't budge, I'll never fall or fold up
I'm a soldier, even if my collar bones crush
or crumble, I will never slip or stumble.”

Soldier, Eminem Recommended by nikola.sydney.

“Maria wandered the empty rooms of the rich with her dustpan and brush, and had their lives, down to the shower gel. There was nothing surprising about them after all, these people with blood-smeared diaries and clean smiles. The pornographic magazines were only remarkable once, though seven pairs of jeans, the same make and size, gave her a fright every time. She tried all the cosmetics in the bathroom cabinet. She cocked the guns and smoothed the sheets with a feeling hand.

The only thing she stole was the music, and even then she left no trace. Each disc she slid out of its sleeve was a different room to clean; the melody curving into the corners, making a joke of the gaps. She hummed as she went, imagining herself into a cleaning woman with a taste for Bach. Imagining herself into a woman who had, somehow, grown into a complete box set of Wagner's Ring cycle and a scratched half-hour of Al Stewart's The Year of the Cat.”

What Are You Like?, Anne Enright

“Being strong and silent only gets you so far... it's the things you don't say you regret the most.”

Ericsson

“I'm not a concept. Too many guys think I'm a concept or I complete them or I'm going to make them alive, but I'm just a fucked up girl who is looking for my own peace of mind. Don't assign me yours.”

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [movie]

“(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
before I come undone
(Save me)
save me from the nothing I've become.”

Bring Me to Life, Evanescence

“i tried to kill the pain
but only brought more
i lay dying
and i'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal
i'm dying praying bleeding and screaming
am i too lost to be saved
am i too lost?

my God my tourniquet
return to me salvation
my God my tourniquet
return to me salvation.”

Tourniquet, Evanescence Recommended by Ashley.

“She came out west just to break away clean
From her family and her friends and a little girl's dream.”

Amphetamine, Everclear Recommended by Ashley.

“She came out west just to break the spell
After three long years in a marriage from hell
Six months clean living sober and right
Her doctors tell her everything will be alright
Yeah, you just take your pill
And everything will be alright
She looks like a teenage anthem
She looks like a magazine girl
She looks like a teenage anthem
Like she used to be happy in another world
She looks like a teenage anthem
She is happy with the girl inside
She looks like a teenage anthem
And looks like she could have been happy in another life
In another life
Happy in another life.”

Amphetamine, 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.

“Such a pretty girl, happy in an ugly place
Watching all the pretty people do lots of ugly things.”

White Men in Black Suits, Everclear Recommended by Ashley.

“I fought because I understood, and could not bear to understand, that is was my destiny–unlike that of my father, whose fate it was to hear the roar of the crowd–to sit in the stands with most men and acclaim others. It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan.”

A Fan's Notes, Frederick Exley

“Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.”

Marilyn Ferguson

“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself.”

Harvey Fierstein

“Self-improvement is masturbation, and self-destruction.”

Fight Club [movie] Recommended by brittany.

“Please don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear, for I wear a mask. I wear a thousand masks, masks that I'm afraid to take off and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature to me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.

I give you the impression I'm secure and that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without, that confidence is my name, coolness my game, that water is calm and I'm in command and that I need no one, but don't believe me, please don't believe me.

My surface may be smooth, but my surface is a mask--my every varying and ever concealing mask. Beneath it dwells the real confusion, fear and aloneness. Beneath lies my smugness, my complacently, but I hide this--I don't want anyone to know it.

I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That's why I frantically created a mask to hide behind-- nonchalant sophisticated facades to help me pretend-- to shield me from the glance that knows-- but such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only salvation and I know it. That is if it's followed by acceptance. If it's followed by love, it's the only thing that can liberate me from myself, from my own self built prison walls and from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of what I cannot assure myself, that I'm really worth while, but I don't tell you this, I don't dare--I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid that your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I'm afraid you'll think less of me and you'll laugh and your laugh will kill me. I'm afraid that deep down, I'm nothing and that I'm just no good and that you'll see this and reject me.”

Don't Be Fooled by Me, Charles C. Finn

“Having gone through unprofessional agonies during her long relapse following Topsy's birth, he had, perforce, hardened himself about her, making a cleavage between Nicole sick and Nicole well. This made it difficult now to distinguish between his self-protective professional detachment and some new coldness in his heart. As an indifference cherished, or left to atrophy, becomes an emptiness, to this extent he had learned to become empty of Nicole, serving her against his will with negations and emotional neglect. One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”

Tender Is The Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”

The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'”

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald