By Category: Self

“I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I have little memory.”

-Possible Side Effects, Augusten Burroughs

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“It's a wonder I'm even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can't believe I haven't killed myself. But there's something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something to do with tomorrow, that there is always one, and that everything can change when it comes.”

-Running With Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

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“Junkies have no interest in sex and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of junk. They go around looking younger for a few days. Then they need more.”

-Just One Fix, William S. Burroughs

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“I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction... I did absolutely nothing.”

-Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs

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“A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in all the world. There is nothing that is an accident. You are a special combination for a purpose-and don't let them tell you otherwise, even if they tell you that purpose is an illusion. (Live an illusion if you have to). You are that combination so that you can do what is essential for you to do. Don't ever believe that you have nothing to contribute. The world is an incredible unfulfilled tapestry. And only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours.”

-Leo Buscaglia

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“Sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.”

-Albert Camus

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“A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope.”

-A Happy Death, Albert Camus

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“I'm sorry, Zagreus, but it's been a long time since I talked about certain things. So I don't know any more---or I'm not sure. When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It's rain and sun both, noon and midnight. You know, Zagreus, I think of the lips I've kissed, and the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I'm all these things at once. I'm sure there are times you wouldn't even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness---I can't say it.”

-A Happy Death, Albert Camus

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“Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came the human beings, they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate - for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.”

-The Fall, Albert Camus

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“...all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved”

-Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote

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“What we want most is to be held...and told..that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)...is going to be alright.”

-Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote

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“Be what you would seem to be -- or if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

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“The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood. O, my America, my new found land. She embarked on a tranced voyage, exploring the whole of herself, clambering her own mountain ranges, penetrating the moist richness of her secret valleys, a physiological Cortez, da Gama or Mungo Park. For hours she stared at herself, naked, in the mirror of her wardrobe; she would follow with her finger the elegant structure of her rib-cage, where the heart fluttered under the flesh like a bird under a blanket, and she would draw down the long line from breast-bone to navel (which was a mysterious cavern or grotto), and she would rasp her palms against her bud-wing shoulderblades. And then she would writhe about, clasp herself, laughing, sometimes doing cartwheels and handstands out of sheer exhilaration at the supple surprise of herself now she no longer a little girl.”

-The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter

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“We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place; but as Sammy watched Joe, he felt the heartbreak of that day in 1935 when the Mighty Molecule had gone away for good.”

-The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

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“Touched the mirror
Broke the surface of the water
Saw my true self
All illusions shattered.”

-Paper and Ink, Tracy Chapman

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“Who took away the part so essential to the whole
Left you a hollow body
Skin and bone.”

-Remember the Tinman, Tracy Chapman

Recommended by Anne.

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“Not once in his life had he danced, not once had he put his arm round an attractive young woman's waist. He would usually be absolutely delighted when, with everyone looking on, a man took a young girl he hadn't met before by the waist and offered his shoulders for her to rest her hands on, but he could never imagine himself in that situation. There had been times when he envied his fellow officers' daring and dashing ways and it made him very depressed. The realization that he was shy, round-shouldered, quite undistinguished, that he had a long waist, the lynx-like side whiskers, hurt him deeply. But over the years this realization had become something of a habit and as he watched his friends dance or talk out loud he no longer envied them but was filled with sadness.”

-The Kiss, Anton Chekhov

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“Too much awareness is a sickness; it keeps me awake all night.”

-Yi Cho-nyon

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“But when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, prickling garments from her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.

How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like some newborn creature, opening it's eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.”

-The Awakening, Kate Chopin

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“Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul. The physical need for sleep began to overtake her; the exuberance which had sustained her and exalted her spirit left her helpless and yielding to the conditions which crowded her in.”

-The Awakening, Kate Chopin

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“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”

-Deepak Chopra

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“In the darkest hour the soul is replenished and given strength to continue and endure.”

-Heart Warrior Chosa

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“Although we think we are in control, it is merely an illusion. It is our desires that control us, that feed us and sustain our existence, for we are the servants of that which we have no control over.”

-Dorian Cleavenger

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“My generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with it. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.”

-Kurt Cobain

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“No matter what you do or say, there's nothing that you can do to make people understand you.”

-Kurt Cobain

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