By Category: Suicide

“It's all a joke to them. Oh he's just sad, he's just overweight, he's just lazy. No, he wants to die. He wants to burn. He wants to never wake up again. Turn the ignore back on.”

-grouphug.us

Recommended by Ronan.

~

“The woman poet must be either a ... sexless, reclusive eccentric, with nothing to say specifically to women, or a brilliant, tragic, tortured suicide.”

-Marilyn Hacker

~

“Even now I prowl through people's houses. Arriving for a party, I hang my coat in the closet and glance at the shelf above the pole, wondering: what's in those boxes? Upstairs to wash my hands and look in the medicine cabinet. Dental floss and Jolen cream bleach for facial hair. A prescription for tetracycline, one for antifungal ointment. Nothing shameful- no Valium, Xanax, or worse, Prozac. These people aren't anxious or depressed. They have sinus infections and athlete's foot. They don't spend the minutes between waking and showering reciting reasons not to kill themselves.

I suspect that people from unhappy families are always searching the cupboards and drawers of happy people. Sliding a hand between the neat stacks of towels in the linen closet, slipping a finger under the hinged lid of a jewel box, flipping furtively through the pages of a book. They are looking everywhere. As if, perhaps, out might fall a list, an outline, the formula for how they do it.”

-Exposure, Kathryn Harrison

~

“And here it must be said that to call suicides only those who actually destroy themselves is false. Among these, indeed, there are many who in a sense are suicides only by accident and in whose being suicide has no necessary place. Among the common run of men there are many of little personality and stamped with no deep impress of fate, who find their end in suicide without belonging on that account to the type of the suicide by inclination; while, on the other hand, of those who are to be counted as suicides by the very nature of their beings are many, perhaps a majority, who never in fact lay hands upon themselves. [...]
But just as there are those who at the least indisposition develop a fever, so do those whom we call suicides, and who are always very emotional and sensitive, develop at the least shock the notion of suicide. [...]
All suicides are familiar with the struggle against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be felled by life than by one's own hand.”

-Steppenwolf: A Novel, Hermann Hesse

~

“All fled--all done, so lift me on the pyre;
The feast is over, and the lamps expire.”

-Robert E. Howard [suicide note]

~

“The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.”

-Suicide's Note, Langston Hughes

Recommended by Holly.

~

“Sh...
Hush now.
Don't say a word.
Just see... watch me perform.
They clap and cheer when I come on stage.
Now this is very common at my age.
They watch me work, making my knots,
thinking that I am programmed like a robot.
I get everything ready and walk up the stairs.
There eyes widen not known what's really there.
I take my work and place it around my neck,
I step off the ledge to do my beautiful dance.
They here the crack, the breaking of my neck.
They cheer and clap now,
thinking nothing of it.
That they just witnessed a suicide,
that it was all real.”

--watch me-, Jackie

~

“Suicide was naturally the consistent course dictated by the logical intellect.”

-Varieties of Religious Experience, William James

~

“It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.”

-Fear Of Flying, Erica Jong

~

“If I would kill myself tonight, who would remember me tomorrow?”

-Josette

~

“It's so hard to live when you know you don't want to.”

-Josette

~

“A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

~

“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.

What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?

I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.

She lit the match.”

-Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen

~

“Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation, but from deliberation.”

-The Present Age, Soren Kierkegaard

~

“There’s something in us that is very much attracted to madness. Everyone who looks off the edge of a tall building has felt at least a faint, morbid urge to jump. And anyone who has ever put a loaded pistol up to his head…All right, my point is this: even the most well-adjusted person is holding onto his or her sanity by a greased rope. I really believe that. The rationality circuits are shoddily built into the human animal.”

-The Ballad Of The Flexible Bullet, Stephen King

Recommended by Soulessbox.

~

“I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out of the window. I could see myself lying on the pavement. Then I seemed to be standing by the body on the pavement. I was two people. Blood and brains were scattered everywhere. I knelt down and began licking up the blood and brains.”

-The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

~

“The therapist looked at the girl with a puzzled face and asked, 'What do you do when your life feels like it's falling apart?'
The girl looked at him and replied, 'I try to kill myself.'”

-Leah Levan

~

“Smile to yourself and fade, shooting star with a razorblade.”

-Not Inside My Head, Liveonrelease

Recommended by Shay.

~

“i've been trying to give myself reasons to live
and i really can't think of one thing

i drive around, i walk around in circles
'cause i've got no sense of direction
and i guess i've got no sense at all.”

-All the Umbrellas in London, Magnetic Fields

~

“They'll just cut our wrists like
Cheap coupons and say that death
Was on sale today.”

-The Fight Song, Marilyn Manson

~

“The bleakness of the landscape is unimaginable. It is as friendless and alien as a Dali painting. Ordinary concerns, such as work or friends, have no place here. Futility muffles thought; time elongates cruelly. Who is to blame for this situation? Those with depression think it must be them. Pointlessness and self-loathing govern them. So the natural final step is suicide. People with depression don't kill themselves to frighten an errant boyfriend. They kill themselves because it is the obvious and right thing to do at that point. It is the only positive step they can think of. ”

-Kay McKall

Recommended by Shay.

~

“I'm getting more pissed with every passing heartbeat. Yet, one can only wonder, isn't every passing heartbeat another step towards death? Are we not in this world, only so we can die? Is the only reason of living, dying? What purpose do we have, to get up every morning, to a scarred body, work, and do it all over again? Are nothing but toys to a supposed god, moving around and doing everything he 'commands'? Does this not mean that suicide is the easiest way out? People say that you shouldn't kill yourself because it's easy, well, isn't anyone who's ever cheated on anything taking the easy way out? So they really can't be saying nothing and still not be involved with hypocrisy. Do we live in a world of liars and hypocrites? Or do they just keep us alive for their own well-being, if they really loved you, they'd let you go to a place where you'd be in peace. This is were hatred comes from, too many people thinking about themselves and not letting others go, making them live a life they don't want to live anymore. Or maybe, the suicidal people are the selfish ones, only thinking about themselves and trying to escape to a better place. That, my friend, is what I want to know.”

-Ida Mehrnoush

~

“this night, walk the dead
in a solitary style
and crash the cemetery gates.
in the dress your husband hates
way down, mark the grave
where the search lights find us
drinking by the mausoleum door
and they found you on the bathroom floor

i miss you, i miss you so far
and the collision of your kiss that made it so hard

back home, off the run
singing songs that make you slit your wrists
it isn't that much fun, staring down a loaded gun
so i won't stop dying, won't stop lying
if you want i'll keep on crying
did you get what you deserve?
is this what you always want me for?”

-Cemetary Drive, My Chemical Romance

Recommended by Catherine.

~

“If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

-Clifford Odets

~

“I have wished you dead and myself dead.
How could it be otherwise.
I have broken into you like a burglar.
And you've set your dogs on me.
And a pile of broken sticks.
A child could kick.
I have climbed you like a monument, gasping,
For the exercise and the view,
And leaned over the railing at the top...
Strong and warm, the summer wind.”

-I Have Wished You Dead, Alicia Ostriker

Navigation

Back to 'Quotes'
Back to 'Do You SI?'