By Category: Self

“And in the first moment of her waking up
She knows she's losing it, yeah she's losing it
When the first cup of coffee tastes like washing up
She knows she's losing it, yeah she's losing it
She goes to the mirror to put on her stuff
She knows she's losing it, oh yeah she's losing it
When she doesn't speak to anyone till four o' clock
She knows she's losing it, yeah she's losing it.”

-She's Losing It, Belle & Sebastian

Recommended by Shay.

~

“In fact, you have become
All of the things you've always run from.”

-The Ascent of Stan, Ben Folds Five

Recommended by Shay.

~

“I was never cool in school - I'm sure you don't remember me
And now it's been ten years I'm still wondering who to be
And I'd love to mix in circles, cliques and social coteries - that's me
Hand me my nosering! (Can we be happy?)
Show me the mosh pit (Can we be happy?)
We can be happy underground.”

-Underground, Ben Folds Five

~

“...she was the kind who noted birthdays down in her little book with the vigor of someone who has often been forgotten.”

-An Invisible Sign Of My Own, Aimee Bender

~

“Before he wakes up I run to the bathroom to see what I look like, and I actually look pretty good. Flushed and fuckable. I go back and he's still sprawled out on the bed and I fold my body into his and think about how I want to look to him when he wakes up. I want to be sleeping in a casual sexy way, to make him want me again.

I remember, especially in high school, I was so good at this kind of fake-out. I rehearsed thoughtfulness, I appeared carefree--and how many guys did I trick? As I sat there, hair tucked behind my ear, supposedly lost in a book, thinking this exact monologue, rereading and rereading the same paragraph, waiting for them to see me and want me, caught in this image of myself as a reader. What about staring at ants, wanting to seem close to nature and whimsical? What about staring into space, wanting to seem expansive, trying to find the thoughts that would fit my self-portrait? I fooled so many guys! I was found mysterious so many times, oh that girl, we don't know what Susie thinks, and all I'm thinking is what do I look like, and all I'm thinking is that I own their thoughts.”

-Fell This Girl, Aimee Bender

~

“The flowers need watering
the silver needs a shine.
Daughter is a magnet
drawn back to where she was last safe.
She touches the tablecloth like a talisman.
Tell me who I was. Tell me what I've become.”

-Mother Waits, Nicole Blackman

~

“She began to feel like the plastic doll she had been named after, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be.”

-I Was a Teenage Fairy, Francesca Lia Block

Recommended by Sibyl.

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“My heart is a teacup with hairline cracks. I feel like I have to walk real carefully so it won't get shaken and just all shatter and break.”

-Missing Angel Juan, Francesca Lia Block

~

“If I insist on situations that make you cry
It's not real
It can be fear
It's in your eyes
It can be here
The complications affect your mind.”

-Astro Boy, Blonde Redhead

Recommended by Mea Culpa.

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“I just want someone to pummel me into submission
This incurable fascination with being totally beaten up
I just want someone to slap me right in the mouth.”

-Mamacita, Blonde Redhead

Recommended by Mea Culpa.

~

“A slow strangle with your feet on the floor
I've got 14 angels and we're sleeping alone
In the back of a cave, where the rest of us go
To feel normal.”

-A Quiet Mind, Blue October

Recommended by Shay.

~

“A brief bout with a razorblade cut me
I freaked out, thinking people didn't love me
In letting go, I am so proud of what I've done
I watched closely as the you I knew forgot me”

-Razorblade, Blue October

Recommended by bri.

~

“He awoke, opened his eyes. The room meant very little to him; he was deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come... there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because alone it was familiar.”

-The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles

~

“here lies clarity, in a perfect grave
comprised of perfect steel, the perfect blade
was a perfect white against the perfect lines, from last perfect night
I'm the perfect picture of complacency
...and that's all I feel
slow motion replaces real time
as the horror fills their eyes
these claws will never kill again

the lines I wear around my wrist
are there to prove that I exist

I am a monster, clothed in crimson sleeves
and perforated lines where my wrists should be”

-Purging, Boys Night Out

~

“You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, 'Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness.' You call yourself a free spirit, a 'wild thing,' and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. ”

-Breakfast at Tiffany's [movie]

Recommended by Shay.

~

“And prescription pills
Well, I take two a day
To make my brain behave
It never does, but who's to say?
At least my doctor gets paid.”

-Loose Leaves, Bright Eyes

Recommended by Shay.

~

“I came to understand that these memories were my salvation. I no longer wanted to know why I had done such things if it meant I wouldn't want to do them anymore. I put my notebooks aside forever. I was different, and that was all. I had always know I was different; I could not trudge through life contentedly chewing whatever cud I found in my mouth, as those around me seemed to do.”

-Exquisite Corpse, Poppy Z. Brite

Recommended by Ghost.

~

“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliffe's miseries, and I watched and felt from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not be seen part of it. My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes trees. My love for Heathcliffe resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliffe! He's always, always in my mind: not a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and-”

-Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

~

“I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place.”

-Year Of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

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“My business not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best of what God made.”

-Robert Browning

~

“the history of melancholia
includes all of us.

me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.

I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.”

-Melancholia, Charles Bukowski

~

“who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
'no.'”

-The Crunch, Charles Bukowski

~

“But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of this badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.”

-A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

~

“All of a sudden, I feel like an emotional paraplegic. I feel that all of my gains and insights are based on control and denial. I'm worried that I'm so profoundly sick as to appear healthy and together.”

-Dry, Augusten Burroughs

~

“Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I'm not anxious, I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be so lonely because it seems catastrophic - seeing the car just as it hits you.”

-Dry, Augusten Burroughs

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