“The injuries that befall us unexpectedly are less severe than those which are deliberately anticipated.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Nenny and I don't look like sisters... not right away. Not the way you can tell with Rachel and Lucy who have the same fat popsicle lips like everybody else in their family. But me and Nenny, we are more alike than you would know. Our laughter for example. Not the shy ice cream bells' giggle of Rachel and Lucy's family, but all of a sudden and surprised like a pile of dishes breaking. And other things I can't explain.

One day we were passing a house that looked, in my mind, like houses I had seen in Mexico. I don't know why. There was nothing about the house that looked exactly like the houses I remembered. I'm not even sure why I thought it, but it seemed to feel right.

Look at that house, I said, it looks like Mexico.

Rachel and Lucy look at me like I'm crazy, but before they can let out a laugh, Nenny says: Yes, that's Mexico all right. That's what I was thinking exactly.”

The House On Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros

“A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.”

Citizen Kane [movie]

“And you may find somebody kind to help and understand you
Someone who is just like you and needs a gentle hand to guide them along
So maybe I'll see you there
We can forget all our troubles, forget all our cares, and go

Downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown, don't wait a minute more
Downtown, everything's waiting for you.”

Downtown, Petula Clark

“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

“Music is like painting in sound. You take it into your inner heart and never lose it. It's eternally mysterious.”

Van Cliburn

“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

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

Kurt Cobain

“Downers and heroin make you itch.”

Journals of Kurt Cobain, Kurt Cobain Recommended by Laura.

“Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world which no external threat can penetrate, build exaggeratedly high defenses against the outside world, against new people, new places, different experiences, and leave their inner world stripped bare. It is there that Bitterness begins its irrevocable work.

The will was the main target of Bitterness (or Vitriol, as Dr. Igor preferred to call it). The people attacked by this malaise began to lose all desire, and within a few years, they became unable to leave their world, where they had spent enormous reserves of energy constructing high walls in order to make reality what they wanted it to be.

In order to avoid external attack, they had also deliberately limited internal growth, they continued going to work, watching television, having children, complaining about the traffic, but these things happened automatically, unaccompanied by any particular emotion, because, after all, everything was under control.

The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions -- hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity -- also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.”

Veronika Decides To Die, Paulo Coelho

“A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”

The Favorite Game, Leonard Cohen Recommended by Emma.

“A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love.”

The Favorite Game, Leonard Cohen

“When it rains I don't mind
Let me stand here all night
Did she take her own life
Let me know she's alright

And every time it rains
I feel her holding me
And every time it rains
All the angels cryin

I'll stay strong, I'll be fine
Carry on with my life
I'll still stare at the sky
Pray for rain, all the time

Why'd you run
Did you hide
Why'd you leave no goodbye
When the clouds take the sky
Does the sun, give you life?”

Rain Song, Cold Recommended by loser.

“She was only seventeen
And forced to blame it on herself
As she hides away to tame the pain she feels
She was thrown to a scene
A drunken man without a will
And a god that makes mistakes
And still pretends

---

She was only trying to breathe
Her broken nails had sliced his skin
As he bruised her face she fades away again
When she came to at the scene
A fevered wind and a match in hand
As she watched the flames she felt alive again”

Sad Happy, Cold

“Come on, oh my star is fading
And I see no chance of release
And I know I'm dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath.”

Amsterdam, Coldplay Recommended by Shay.

“You can say what you mean
But it won't change a thing
I'm sick of the secrets
Stood on the edge, tied to the noose
And you came along and you cut me loose.”

Amsterdam, Coldplay Recommended by Eleri.

“When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse.”

Fix You, Coldplay Recommended by Shay.

“Come up to meet you
Tell you I'm sorry
You don't know how lovely you are.”

The Scientist, Coldplay

“Questions of science
Science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart.”

The Scientist, Coldplay

“I was by chance spared the sight of Renée dying, then dead. She carried off with her more than one secret, and beneath her purple veil, Renée Vivien, the poet, led away--her throat encircled with moonstones, beryls, aquamarines, and other anemic gems--the immodest child, the excited little girl who taught me, with unembarrassed competence: 'There are fewer ways of making love than they say, and more than one believes.'”

Colette, as quoted by Dolores Klaich in Woman Plus Woman

“Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live.”

The Lacon, Charles Caleb Colton

“'For that couple of minutes she symbolized everything that is wrong with how we perceive beauty as a society, she was the store bought ideal that drives girls to bulimia and anorexia. She was the skinny thinspiration that helps thirteen year olds put off eating for just one more day, and so I walked over and punched her.'”

Lockpick Pornography, Joey Comeau

“I gotta tell you, it gets better every day you stay alive
And I'm amazed every day that the sun decides to rise
every minute, every hour, is another chance to change
Life is beautiful & terrible & strange.”

Take Me Home, Concrete Blond Recommended by Shay.

“I saw some piglets suckling their dead mother. After a short while they shuddered and went away. They had sensed that she could no longer see them and that she wasn’t like them any more. What they loved in their mother wasn’t her body, but whatever it was that made her body alive.”

Confucius

“I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say.”

Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad