“If wild my breast and sore my pride,
I bask in dreams of suicide,
if cool my heart and high my head
I think 'How lucky are the dead'”

Observation, Dorothy Parker

“Razors pain you, Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful, Nooses give,
Gas smells awful. You might as well live.”

Résumé, Dorothy Parker

“My land is bare of chattering folk / The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke / From all my burning bridges.”

Sanctuary, Dorothy Parker

“I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.”

The Little Hours, Dorothy Parker

“By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady make a note of this:
One of you is lying.”

Unfortunate Coincidence, Dorothy Parker

“hatred is a mirror.”

Abby Parkerway

“Suicide is just a moment, Lexy told me. This is how she described it to me. For just a moment, it doesn't matter that you've got people who love you and the sun is shining and there's a movie coming out this weekend that you've been dying to see. It hits you all of a sudden that nothing is ever going to be okay, ever, and you kind of dare yourself. You pick up a knife and press it gently to your skin, you look out a nineteenth-story window and you think, I could just do it. I could just do it. And most of the time, you look at the height and you get scared, or you think about the poor people on the sidewalk below - what if there are kids coming home from school and they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this terrible thing you're going to make them see? And the moment's over. You think about how sad it would've been if you never got to see that movie, and you look at your dog and wonder who would've taken care of her if you had gone. And you go back to normal. But you keep it there in your mind. Even if you never take yourself up on it, it gives you a kind of comfort to know that the day is yours to choose. You tuck it away in your brain like sour candy tucked in your cheek, and the puckering memory it leaves behind, the rough pleasure of running your tongue over its strange terrain, is exactly the same.... The day was hers to choose, and perhaps in that treetop moment when she looked down and saw the yard, the world, her life, spread out below her, perhaps she chose to plunge toward it headlong. Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air.”

The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst

“What's it like, Lexy? You wake up and you feel - what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of the flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces iniside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says 'Turn left at the corner' or 'Don't forget to stop at the post office,' only now it's saying, 'I hate myself.' It's saying, 'I want to die.'”

The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.”

Pensées, Blaise Pascal

“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.

Still, you can't listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”

Introduction to Civil War 1916-1937, John Dos Passos

“How damned ridiculous it all is! The long generations toiling - skimping, lashing themselves screwing higher and higher the tension of their minds, polishing brighter and brighter the mirror of intelligence to end in this - My God what a time - All the cant and hypocrisy, all the damnable survivals, all the vestiges of old truths now putrid and false infect the air, choke you worse than German gas - The ministers from their damn smug pulpits, the business men - the heroics about war - my country right or wrong - oh infinities of them! Oh the tragic farce of the world.”

The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos, John Dos Passos

“There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.”

Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

“Pity without the desire to help is what I call narcissism.”

Patrick

“I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost would be more than I can bear.”

The Patriot [movie] Recommended by Jaine.

“An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.”

Pope John Paul II Recommended by kimmysue.

“Life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic.”

The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950, Cesare Pavese Recommended by Mea Culpa.

“'Is something wrong?' she said.
'Of course there is.'
'You're still alive,' she said.
'Do I deserve to be?'
Is that the question?
And if so...if so...who answers?”

Alive, Pearl Jam

“And now my bitter hands
Cradle broken glass
Of what was everything?”

Black, Pearl Jam

“And I'll pay it off in blood, let I be wed...
And I'm already cut up and half dead...
I'll end up alone like I began...”

Corduroy, Pearl Jam Recommended by Cassie.

“Aah...don't even think about gettin' inside
Voices in me head...ooh, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart.”

Footsteps, Pearl Jam Recommended by Cassie.

“Fuck everyone pretending to like their father. Fuck being blown off. Fuck even trying. Fuck caring. Fuck trying to be in a good mood. Fuck being poor. Fuck not having the money. Fuck rice without butter. Fuck off. Fuck fifteen dollars. Fuck turning in cans. Fuck dirty dishes. Fuck cup-o-noodles. Fuck planes. Fuck Bill Gates. Fuck computers. Fuck your books. Fuck off. Fuck grades. Fuck being sixteen. Fuck compromises. Fuck work. Fuck society. Fuck off. Fuck pens with no ink. Fuck tailgaters. Fuck parallel parking. Fuck expensive stores. Fuck wanting. Fuck dreaming. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck TEEN magazines and fuck hormones. Fuck safe sex, rock and roll, one night stands and meatloaf. Fuck!!! Fuck expensive CD's and kids who only burn and think they're cool. Fuck 80 dollar shoes and bling bling. Just seriously, fuck everything. I'm in the most negative mood possible and at this point in time I have absolutely no resolution to change it.”

Alicia Peaslee

“We go to so much trouble
To postpone the unavoidable
And prolong the pain of being alive.”

Priests/Paramedics, Pedro the Lion Recommended by Melissa.

“It is quite well understood that a clinically depressed person will show little, if any, interest in constructive activity concerning future events or outcomes. In this respect, Simon has only flirted with depression in its definitive or clinical form. But if that is all that depression required, then I could say without much hesitation that Simon has always been, other than for short periods, too involved in things to be clinically depressed. William really knows very little about what's on his son's mind. What he and many people don't understand is that there is more to depression than a sometimes overwhelming feeling of inadequacy and hopelessness and profound sadness. When people are depressed, they are sometimes very, very angry. They are not just quietly miserable. They can be filled with great passion. ”

Seven Types Of Ambiguity, Elliot Perlman Recommended by Shay.

“Curiosity, with it's many charms,
Can stir up serious regrets;
Thousands of examples turn up every day.
Women give in, but it's a fleeting pleasure;
Once satisfied, it ceases to be.
And always it proves very costly.”

Bluebeard, Charles Perrault

“Even in the eyes that do not look at me, I suspect the mockery I consider natural, directed toward the inelegant exception that I am in a world of people who do things and enjoy themselves, and in the supposed depth of physiognomies that pass by the mocking laughter aimed at the timid gesticulation of my life, a consciousness of my life that I impose and interpose ”

The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa Recommended by Shay.