“All my life I could do anything, except the one thing I wanted.”

The Hours [movie]

“If I were thinking clearly, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs but the violent jolt of the Capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient, yes, even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity.”

The Hours [movie]

“Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

Aldous Huxley

“'But I like the inconveniences.'

'We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'

'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'

'In fact,' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'All right then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphillis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence.

'I claim them all,' said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.”

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

“And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past, you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that's what soma is.”

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

“She's not like that. It's like she doesn't need other people to define who she is. She knows.”

If These Walls Could Talk 2 [television movie]

“I need you to hear. I need you to see.
That I have had all I can take
And exploding seems like a definite possibility
To me
So Pardon me while I burst into flames.
I've had enough of the world, and its people's mindless games
So Pardon me while I burn, and rise above the flame
Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same.”

Pardon Me, Incubus Recommended by Suzanne.

“Falling, falling, falling, falling down. Look yourself in the eye before you drown.”

Center Stage, Indigo Girls

“All my life, I've painted with anger's brush.”

Keeper Of My Heart, Indigo Girls

“Devil has a hot rod
Devil high on speed
Devil has a black dress
So her arms can bleed.”

Devil With The Black Dress On, Jack Off Jill Recommended by Elsa.

“We are all candy covered on the outside
Peel away the shell and we're rotten from the inside.”

Lollirot, Jack Off Jill Recommended by Jaine.

“The apple falls far from the tree
she's rotten and so beautiful
I'd like to keep her here with me
and tell her that she's beautiful
She takes the pills to fall asleep
and dreams that she's invisible
Tormented dreams she stays awake
recalls when she was capable...”

Vivica, Jack Off Jill Recommended by Ashley.

“To this latter way, the morbid-minded way, as we might call it, healthy-mindedness pure and simple seems unspeakably blind and shallow.”

Varieties of Religious Experience, William James

“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the me's is me? The wild, impulsive, chaotic, energetic, and crazy one? Or the shy, withdrawn, desperate, suicidal, doomed, and tired one? Probably a bit of both, hopefully much that is neither.”

An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison

“I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead
I try and tell myself it'll be all right
I just shouldn't think anymore tonight.”

You Were Meant For Me, Jewel

“Some of us fall by the wayside
And some of us soar to the stars
And some of us sail through our troubles
And some have to live with the scars.”

Circle of Life, Elton John Recommended by Saraya.

“To rid ourselves of our shadows - who we are - we must step into either total light or total darkness.”

Jeremy Preston Johnson

“If being sane is thinking there's something wrong with being different... I'd rather be completely fucking mental.”

Angelina Jolie

“If I should find a way to escape my fate, do I deserve to?”

The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan

“He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard: and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling but not yet fallen, still unfallen but about to fall.”

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

“The other day I wrote down the following wish: 'When passing a house, to be pulled in through the ground-floor window by a rope tied around one's neck and to be hauled up, bloody and ragged, through all the ceilings, furniture, walls, and attics, without consideration, as if by a person who is paying no attention, until the empty noose, dropping the last shreds of me when breaking through the roof tiles, appears on the roof.”

letter, Franz Kafka

“I am like everyone else! Inside I am like everyone else! Why can't people understand that?”

Phantom, Susan Kay Recommended by Sibyl.

“My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mortal imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand. And yet, like Faust, I look in vain, I learn in vain... For as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.”

Phantom, Susan Kay Recommended by Sibyl.

“I know what it's like to want to die. How it hurts to smile. How you try to fit in but you can't. How you hurt yourself on the outside to try to kill the thing on the inside.”

Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen