Quotes By Letter: M

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes his whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.”

-Moby Dick, Herman Melville

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“Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal pre-eminence in this hue;
[...]
yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

The elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten the terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors that they are?”

-Moby Dick, Herman Melville

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“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

-Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs, Harpers Magazine, Herman Melville

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“I don't even know how long she's been gone. It's like I've woken up in bed and she's not here because she's gone to the bathroom or something. But somehow, I know she's never gonna come back to bed. If I could just reach over and touch her side of the bed, I would know that it was cold, but I can't. I know I can't have her back but I don't want to wake up in the morning, thinking she's still here. I lie here not knowing how long I've been alone. So how, how can I heal? How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time?”

-Memento [movie]

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“I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I don't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world is still there. Do I believe the world's still there? Is it still out there?... Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we really are. I'm no different... Now where was I?”

-Memento [movie]

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“And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; there in they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber stamps.”

-H.L. Mencken

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“Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.”

-Separation, W.S. Merwin

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“Life it seems, will fade away
Drifting further every day
Getting lost within myself
Nothing matters no one else
I have lost the will to live
Simply nothing more to give.”

-Fade to Black, Metallica

Recommended by Jared.

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“Just when all seems fine
And I'm pain free
You jab another pin
Jab another pin in me.”

-Fixxxer, Metallica

Recommended by Jared.

~

“The marks inside your arms, spell me
Spell only me.”

-Prince Charming, Metallica

Recommended by Jared.

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“Where do I take this pain of mine
I run but it stays right by my side

So tear me open, pour me out
There's things inside that scream and shout
And the pain still hates me
So hold me until it sleeps

Just like a curse, just like a stray
You feed it once and now it stays
Now it stays, now it stays

So tear me open but beware
There's things inside without a care.”

-Until It Sleeps, Metallica

Recommended by Jared.

~

“It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain--the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head--but it was manageable. I could live through it. It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.”

-New Moon, Stephenie Meyer

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“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

-Absence, Edna St. Vincent Millay

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“Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.”

-Autumn Chant, Edna St. Vincent Millay

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“A chalk outline is slowly being drawn around common sense and most Americans can't even identify the victim”

-The Death of Common Sense, Dennis Miller

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“Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, pessaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.”

-An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere, The Cosmological Eye, Henry Miller

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“The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.”

-Black Spring, Henry Miller

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“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there.”

-Sexus, Henry Miller

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“I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me-or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed-doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and everything you call yours. Show me your father, with his kites, his race horses, his free passes for the opera: I will eat them all, swallow them alive. Where is the chair you sit in, where is your favorite comb, your toothbrush, your nail file? Trot them out that I may devour them at one gulp. You have a sister more beautiful than yourself, you say. Show her to me-I want to lick the flesh from her bones.”

-Sexus, Henry Miller

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“I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligent language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul. I am dancing the very sane and lovely dance of the angelic gorilla. These are my brothers and sisters who are insane and unangelic. We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but we are separated like stars.”

-The Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

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“If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.”

-The Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

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“If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard--and in order to forget.”

-The Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

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“If there were a man who dared to say all that he thought of this world there would not be left him a square foot of ground to stand on. When a man appears the world bears down on him and breaks his back. There are always too many rotten pillars left standing, too much festering humanity for man to bloom. The superstructure is a lie and the foundation is a huge quaking fear. If at intervals of centuries there does appear a man with a desperate, hungry look in his eyes, a man who would turn the world upside down in order to create a new race, the love that he brings to the world is turned to bile and he becomes a scourge. If now and then we encounter pages that explode, pages that wound and sear, that wring groans and tears and curses, know that they come from a man with his back up, a man whose only defenses left are his words and his words are always much stronger than the lying, crushing weight of the world, stronger than all the racks and wheels which the cowardly invent to crush out the miracle of personality. If any man ever dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.”

-The Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

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“The more you reach out toward the world the more the world retreats. Nobody wants real love, real hatred. Nobody wants you to put your hand in his sacred entrails - that's only for the priest in the hour of sacrifice. While you live, while the blood's still warm, you are to pretend that there is no such thing as blood and no such thing as a skeleton beneath the covering of flesh. Keep off the grass! That's the motto by which people live.”

-Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

~

“'Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.'
Pooh thought for a little while. 'How old shall I be then?'
'Ninety-nine.'
Pooh nodded. 'I promise,' he said.”

-The House at Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne

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