Quotes By Letter: M

“Most people love you for who you pretend to be... to keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretense... It's so true, we're locked in an image, an act. And the sad thing is, people get so used to their image; they grow attached to their masks; they love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it. They feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”

-Creem Magazine, Jim Morrison

Recommended by kimmysue.

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“We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.”

-Creem Magazine, Jim Morrison

Recommended by kimmysue.

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“When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same.”

-Toni Morrison

Recommended by Mea Culpa.

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“And now when I see her searching the garbage - for what? The thing we assassinated? I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late.”

-The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

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“But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain. Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it -- taste it -- sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base -- everywhere in that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted windowpanes. It coated my chest, along with the salve, and when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.”

-The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

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“I'm just dramatically, supernaturally, non-sexual.”

-Melody Maker, Morrissey

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“From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.”

-Edvard Munch

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“Illness, Insanity and Death are the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life.”

-Edvard Munch

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“Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.”

-Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami

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“But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause...I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can't.”

-Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

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“Your heart is a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That's it. That's my heart.”

-Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami

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“Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

It's a cliché translated into words, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.

Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.”

-Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

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“I would stare at the grains of light suspended in that silent space, struggling to see into my own heart. What did I want? And what did others want from me? But I could never find the answers. Sometimes I would reach out and try to grasp the grains of light, but my fingers touched nothing. ”

-Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

Recommended by Shay.

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“I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has deeper roots. And that's why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don't wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life. I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That's all I want.”

-Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

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“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”

-The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

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“Maybe years later the slut has the look of a woman who has lived somewhere before. She now knows the words for certain things, is familiar with three-day winds, the roads of Morocco, the strongholds of the British, the uses of kohl, the laying and folding styles of napkins for all sorts of tables, has heard music from instruments deep-bellied and two-stringed, cries that were songs, waves washing on rock, coral, and sand. She has pens filled with ink and some that are plumed. Slippers sewn with gold thread and pointed toes. Gum smelling of leaves. Oil in wax-sealed jars. Says 'no' as a question after her sentences. Pedals backward to brake on a bike that only brakes by hand. Eats steak with a knife like it was a fork. Looks skyward for the grace of God. Digs in a garden with shards of broken bowl. Calls dogs with the clap of her hands. Trims her nail with a blade. Twists her hair and burns the broken, frayed ends. Rubs her teeth with hollow grass blades in the morning and night. Wears skirts that are scarves knotted at the hip. Writes in a leather-bound book. Totes a cat on her shoulder... Joins children at games on the street, throwing off her shoes and hiking up her dress, letting the girls try her perfume kept in a vial, applied with a stick to the small beating veins at their necks. She gives them names they have never heard before and tells them they are the words for tree, sky and lake in a country where the girls never bathe but are licked clean by cows.”

-Here They Come, Yannick Murphy

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“Who's so phony and always surrounded?
Stop your screaming, no one can hear
All the scars on your skin: 'Post no bills'

Who you were
Was so beautiful
Remember who, who you were

Hide from the mirror, the cracks and the memories
Hide from your family, they won't know you now
For all the holes in our soul host no thrills.”

-Screenager, Muse

Recommended by Alex.

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“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.

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“Well let's go back to the middle of the day that starts it all
I can't begin to let you know just what I'm feeling
And now the red ones make me fly
And the blue ones help me fall
And I think I'll blow my brains against the ceiling
And as the fragments of my skull begin to fall
Fall on your tongue like pixie dust just think happy thoughts

And we'll fly home
We'll fly home
You and I
We'll fly home.”

-Headfirst For Halos, My Chemical Romance

Recommended by Nikki.

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“You're running after something that you'll never kill.”

-Thank You For the Venom, My Chemical Romance

Recommended by Caitie.

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“Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison, and the crime is how much we all hate ourselves.”

-My So-Called Life [television show]

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