“'I won't play a cheap parlor game with human lives for party favors, Charlie.'

'Congratulations to you,' I said. 'You just described modern psychiatry.'”

Rage, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

“When everything is at its worst, your mind just throws it all into the wastebasket and goes to Florida for a little while. There is a sudden electric what-the-hell glow as you stand there looking back over your shoulder at the bridge you just burnt down.”

Rage, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

“He realized how miserable and unknown and vulnerable he was in the world. The universe seemed to shriek and clatter and roar around him like a huge and indifferent jalopy rushing down a hill and toward the lip of a bottomless chasm. ”

The Running Man, Richard Bachman (Stephen King) Recommended by Shay.

“Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one.”

The Running Man, Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

“Life begins when you accept your fate.”

Shattered Faith, Bad Religion Recommended by digitalmartyr.

“The murder exists like a stone inside of her that she won't be free of, until she hoists it out by the killing. She isn't afraid as much as she is disturbingly calm. She knows it won't be hard for her. When she became a mother, she felt what an animal must feel, the deep pain calcifying into an animalistic protectiveness. It was after giving birth, holding her children, that she felt the most tender and the most capable of murder.”

The Madam, Julianna Baggott

“Often I've thought of myself as a state; a country or, at the very least, a city. It used to seem to me that the different ways I felt sometimes about ideas, courses of action and so on were like the differing political moods that countries go through. It has always seemed to me that people vote in a new government not because they actually agree with their politics but just because they want a change. Somehow they think that things will be better under the new lot. Well, people are stupid, but it all seems to have more to do with mood, caprice and atmosphere than carefully thought-out arguments. I can feel the same sort of thing going on in my head. Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.”

The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks

“What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.”

La vida es sueño (Life Is But a Dream), Pedro Calderón de la Barca

“It's like a dream you try to remember but it's gone
Then you try to scream but it only comes out as a yawn
When you try to see the world beyond your front door.”

Pinch Me, Barenaked Ladies Recommended by Shay.

“Pinch me, pinch me because I'm still asleep
Please God, tell me that I'm still asleep.”

Pinch Me, Barenaked Ladies Recommended by Shay.

“My hands are locked up tight in fists
My mind is racing filled with lists
Of things to do and things I've done
Another sleepless night's begun.”

Who Needs Sleep, Barenaked Ladies Recommended by Shay.

“'So the loss of memory applies to the later part of your service in France, but the early part - the first six months or so - is comparatively clear?'

'Ye-es.'

Rivers sat back in his chair. 'Would you like to tell me something about that early part?'

'No.'

'But do you remember it?'

'Doesn't mean I want to talk about it.' He looked round the room. 'I don't see why it has to be like this anyway.'

'Like what?'

'All the questions from you, all the answers from me. Why can't it be both ways?'

'Look, Mr Prior, if you went to the doctor with bronchitis and he spent half the consultation telling you about his lumbago, you would not be pleased. Would you?'

'No, but if I went to my doctor in despair it might help to know he at least understood the meaning of the word.'

'Are you in despair?'

Prior sighed, ostentatiously impatient.

'You know, I talk to a lot of people who are in despair or very close to it, and my experience is that they don't care what their doctor feels. That's the whole point about despair, isn't it? That you turn it on yourself.'

'Well, all I can say is I'd rather talk to a real person than a strip of empathic wallpaper.'

Rivers smiled. 'I like that.'

Prior glared at him.”

Regeneration, Pat Barker

“When she lowers her eyes she seems to hold all the beauty in the world between her eyelids; when she raises them I see only myself in her gaze.”

Natalie Clifford Barney

“To die would be an awfully great adventure.”

Peter Pan, James Barrie

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. ”

A Lovers Discourse: Fragments, Roland Barthes

“I have been dying since October. I wake up at night so afraid, so terrified, that I couldn't be that afraid while awake. It has taken its toll. I have come to hate this life in this system of things. I have come to have no hope.”

Mark O. Barton

“I am the wound and the knife!
I am the blow and the cheek!
I am the limbs and the wheel--
The victim and the executioner!”

L'Héautontimorouménos, Charles Baudelaire

“How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.”

La Fanfarlo, Charles Baudelaire

“Me, I drink, I still smoke, I still eat all kinds of stuff they tell me not to eat - I don't even floss, for God's sake. My circulation works like the post office, and even my cholesterol has arthritis. Only reason I've lasted this long is I had this stupid job teaching beautiful, useless stuff to idiots.”

Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros, Peter S. Beagle

“But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. 'Where have you been?' Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.

'I am here now,' she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. 'And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?' With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. 'I wish you had never come, why do you come now?' The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

“I know you. I almost knew you as soon as I saw you on the road, coming to my door with your cook and your clown. Since then, there is no movement of yours that had not betrayed you. A pace, a glance, a turn of the head, the flash of your throat as you breathe, even your way of standing perfectly still-- they were all my spies.”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

“Prince Lir stood between her body and the Bull, weaponless, but with his hands up as though they still held a sword and shield. Once more in that endless night, the prince said, 'No.'

He looked very foolish, and he was about to be trampled flat. The Red Bull could not see him, and would kill him without ever knowing that he had been in the way. Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him, and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold: it spilled through his skin, sprang from his fingers and toes, welled up equally in his eyes and his hair and the hollows of his shoulders. There was too much to hold, too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, 'I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.'”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

“The prince said, 'Who is she Molly? What kind of woman is it who believes-who knows, for I saw her face-that she can cure wounds with a touch, and who weeps without tears?' Molly went on about her work, still humming to herself. 'Any woman can weep without tears,' she answered over her shoulder, 'and most can heal with her hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that's riddle enough.'”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

“You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't seem to keep things straight. And why should they? They die so soon.”

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle