“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”

Eleonora, Edgar Allan Poe

“Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.”

to Selden Rodman in 1956, Conversations with Artists, Jackson Pollack

“The night of the fight, you may feel a slight sting. That's pride fucking with you. Fuck pride. Pride only hurts, it never helps.”

Pulp Fiction [movie]

“I don't want to die,
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.”

Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen Recommended by Zoe.

“Sometimes in growing as an individual you may grow away from the person that you love.”

Queer As Folk [television show] Recommended by Angela J.

“But long before Kate and Ultra Slimfast came along, hanging over the lives of every little girl born in the second half of the 20th century was the impossibly curvy shadow (40-18-32 in life-size terms) of Barbie. That preposterous physique, we learn as kids, is what a woman looks like with her clothes off.”

Anna Quindlen

“Jump out of bed as soon as you hear the alarm clock!
You may also find it useful spending five minutes each
morning saying to yourself: 'everyday in every way I
am getting better and better.' perhaps it is a good idea
to start a new day with the right frame of mind.”

'OK COMPUTER' CD cover, Radiohead

“I don't care if it hurts,
I want to have control.
I want a perfect body,
I want a perfect soul.
I want you to notice,
when I'm not around.
You're so fucking special,
I wish I was special.”

Creep, Radiohead

“So, you people made a martyr out of me, after all. And that is the one thing I've tried all my life not to be. It's so graceless, being a martyr. It's honoring your adversaries too much. But I'll tell you this, Alvah - I'll tell it to you, because I couldn't find a less appropriate person to hear it: nothing that you do to me - or to him - will be worse than what I'll do to myself. If you think I can't take the Stoddard Temple, wait till you see what I can take.”

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

“The question isn't 'who is going to let me'; it's 'who is going to stop me.'”

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

“There are two things we must get rid of early in life: a feeling of personal superiority and an exaggerated reverence for the sexual act.”

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

“There will be days when a bus driver snaps at you as you enter a bus, and he'll be only asking for a dime, but that won't be what you'll hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for.”

The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

“The weight of the frame bit into my shoulders; the points of the spears clawed at me; the grass sliced my feet; the breeze tore at my skin - I was one large, exposed nerve. I was so completely open and vulnerable and yet, at the same time I felt trapped, caged.”

Arrin Reddog Takes Kavadi, Arin RedDog

“So I own not a notion
I escape and ape content
I don't own emotion, I rent.”

Rent

“I only came in here to inquire the way to the nearest cinema. I am a respectable woman, une femme convenable, on her way to the nearest cinema. Faites comme les autres -- that's been my motto all my life. Faites comme les autres, damn you.

And a lot he cares -- I could have spared myself the trouble. But this is my attitude to life. Please, please, monsieur et madame, mister, missis and miss, I am trying so hard to be like you. I know I don't succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, and chained? And, mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. . . . But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think -- and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.

Now the waiter has finished telling me how to get to the nearest cinema.

'Another Pernod,' I say.”

Good Morning, Midnight, Jean Rhys

“What are we without our suffering, our regret?”

Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice

“And you must know we do not really change over time; we are as flowers unfolding; we merely become more nearly ourselves.”

Queen Of The Damned, Anne Rice

“If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. ”

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke Recommended by Shay.

“The poet makes himself a seer by a long, prodigious, and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, and keeps only their quintessences.”

Jean Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud

“But as we were running and she was changing-- as if she was losing her physical form through the sheer speed of transformation-- develop, fix, varnish-- she rose above her circumstances -- Oxford, 1859, my rooms above the old library-- and became part of the ether-- and I rose out of mine. We were playing a higher game, above the confines of who we were-- no longer the pale stutterer, the stooped and dessicated Mr. Dodgson and a little girl with hair falling into her eyes-- but two beings changing and fluttering above the earth.”

Still She Haunts Me, Katie Roiphe

“I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.”

Henry Rollins Recommended by Tricia.

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

Henry Rollins Recommended by Tricia.

“The colors have built up in my mind
They're bleeding through my heart
And nobody knows that they exist
Look at my bursted veins
Now do you see the red in me
It's a sign for the end

Only the end of the red
Will show you my blue side

I've been given my brush and plate
But where will I paint my life
And will the buyer in the sky
Believe in what I dream
And it's so hard for me to explain
What I will miss
To myself.”

Blueside, Rooney Recommended by Bonna.

“You don't know me so well
I think you know that now
I'm unbreakable
There's no need for fragile stickers
You're too young for me
But I can keep a secret
I'm in total control
Of the situation.”

Daisy Duke, Rooney Recommended by Bonna.

“I'm a terrible person
I'm a terrible person
I'm a terrible person
Cause I've made up my mind
I'm a terrible person.”

I'm A Terrible Person, Rooney Recommended by Bonna.