“You're everybody's second home
Always trying to get me alone
An easy way to lose it all
Always there when all else fails
Over by the west side rails

But I don't really need that now
I never really did anyhow
I only really needed alcohol
Something that'll treat me okay
And wouldn't say the things you'd say

Please turn out the light
I get a sick confusion headache trying to figure out who's right

Dreaming on the silver strand
Waking up to plainclothes man
You little bastard, little boy in blue
Someone's gonna get to you
And fuck up everything you do

He's so unhappy inside
He's serious with everyone
And he thinks he'll win you with his angry kiss
Acting like he has no needs
Wanting you to watch him bleed

Made for each other bet you pay me any mind
Just goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
But I don't know
I don't think so...

There's something that I'll tell you now
Now that no one else is around
The sort of lesson that I learned from you
Not quite the way you planned
But I know you'll understand

Someone takes a photograph
A picture while their sweetheart laughs
A perfect moment in a flash of light
Counting back from 3 to 1
That's exactly what you've done

And I'm so unsurprised
I remember, I remember why I dream in black & white

Goes to show my continual decline
They say that I'll recover my love of her once in a while
But I don't know
I don't think so
I don't think so...”

Plainclothes Man, Elliott Smith

“It's a picture perfect evening and I'm staring down the sun
Fully loaded deaf and dumb and done
Waiting for sedation to disconnect my head
Or any situation where I'm better off then dead.”

Sweet Adeline, Elliott Smith

“one day i got sick
she played me a nasty old trick
said i need cigarettes
walked round the block
caught a cab
stayed gone for too long
and my love had gotten so strong
just to try being back on my own
i had to go to rehab
all i need is a safe place to bleed
is this where it's at
having no chance
steps in a dance
your whole life's been in combat
now i'm the king of the ward
'cos i'm good and i swallow my sword
and puke it out
for the doctors to write a new prescription
tranquil as a dove
people that have lost their true love
all seem to fit the same description
i feel cold, useless and old
I wish i was no one
take me home my love.”

True Love, Elliott Smith

“I go into record shops a lot - any record shop, anywhere, sometimes to buy records, sometimes just to browse, but frequently to indulge in other, less readily comprehensible activities, which have nothing to do with buying, or seeking things to buy, at all.

Very often I go into a record shop and look at records I already own. I actively seek out in the browser bins copies of albums which I already have and which I have no intention of buying again, and look at them. Normally I won't trouble to remove them from the rack or bin; I'll just flick to where they sit, open up a little viewing space and then pause, not really to think or anything, but as if seeking some kind of pointless confirmation: 'Yep, here's Scritti Politti's Cupid and Psyche 85. In front of the board saying Scritti Politti. In the S section.'

I don't find this behaviour easy to explain, though clearly there is wishfulness involved, that if only you didn't already have this record you would be able to buy it. Chiefly, though, I suspect it is descended from a piece of primary-school playground business wherein someone would skim through their bubblegum cards/football stickers or similar collectables while someone else stood at their shoulder announcing the relation of this collection to their own: 'Goddit. Goddit. Goddit. Haven't goddit. Goddit', etc. But in the playground, this performance at least served a practical purpose, as a prelude to swapping or some other form of trading, whereas any pop-fuelled adult version feels much more like the conduct of an addict, standing there in isolation at the browsers, reciting to himself a numb mantra: 'Goddit. Goddit. Goddit...'”

Lost In Music, Giles Smith

“She found it difficult, this thing of being alone, awaiting the arrival of a group. She prepared a face - as her favourite poet had it - to meet the faces that she met, and it was a procedure that required time and forewarning to function correctly. In fact, when she was not in company it didn't seem to her that she had a face at all... And yet in college, she knew she was famed for being opinionated, a 'personality' - the truth was she didn't take these public passions home, or even out of the room, in any serious way. She didn't feel that she had any real opinions, or at least not in the way other people seemed to have them. Once the class was finished she saw at once how she might have argued the thing just as viciously and successfully the other way round; defended Flaubert over Foucault; rescued Austen from insult instead of Adorno. Was anyone ever genuinely attached to anything? She had no idea. It was either only Zora who experienced this odd impersonality or it was everybody, and they were all play-acting, as she was. She presumed that this was the revelation college would bring her, at some point. In the meantime, waiting like this, waiting to be come upon by real people, she felt herself to be light, existentially light, and nervously rumbled through possible topics of conversation, a ragbag of weighty ideas she carried around in her brain to lend herself the appearance of substance. Even on this short trip to the bohemian end of Wellington - a journey that, having been traversed by car, offered no opportunity whatsoever for reading - she had brought along, in her knapsack, three novels and a short tract by De Beauvoir on ambiguity - so much ballast to stop her floating away, up and over the flood, into the night sky.”

On Beauty, Zadie Smith

“Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.”

The Girl With Bangs, Zadie Smith

“don't feel bad for me
I want you to know
deep in my heart I will be
so glad to go.”

Asleep, The Smiths

“Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake -- if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this could lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.”

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket

“Cynical - A word used by the frightened to describe the realistic.”

Snog

“Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair. When it comes, it degrades one's self and ultimately eclipses the capacity to give or receive affection. It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself. ”

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon Recommended by Shay.

“It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed - but you can get through all that. Not happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. Major depression is a birth and a death: it is both the new presence of something and the total disappearance of something.”

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, Andrew Solomon

“And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open--and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herrings are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet - and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy. So what's this about unwiped feet? And what's this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory-property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it might be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how your are imprinted in their memory!”

The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“Well, I'm willing to break myself
To shake this hell from everything I touch
I'm willing to bleed for days my reds and grays.”

Break Myself, Something Corporate Recommended by Amy.

“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.”

Esquire, July 1968, Susan Sontag

“Better to die, and sleep
The never-waking sleep, than linger on
And dare to live when the soul's life is gone.”

Sophocles

“Parading around town with her open wounds
Saying: 'Hush now, don't tell a soul -
Any charity will come too soon,
I can get through this on my own.'
And she's recruiting sympathy like it's an army
And as the front lines fall, she brings new lines up
She says: 'keep on your tip-toes, boys, my tissue's scarring,'
Collecting pity like change in a cup ”

This Ship, Martina Sorbara Recommended by Shay.

“Trying to read her palm with a clenched fist
Calling out for whatever's in store
Asking: 'God, did the Devil put you up to this?
Whatever it is, I can't take it any more.'”

This Ship, Martina Sorbara Recommended by Shay.

“And every little thing about this tells me
Nothing out there is ever gonna help me
All these words that I hear spoken just promises broken now.”

Promises Broken, Soul Asylum Recommended by Len.

“don't tell your mother that you are afraid
don't tell your lover that your heart might break
don't tell your gods you no longer believe
because as soon as you say it out loud they will leave you.”

Bon Idée, Regina Spektor

“Some days aren't yours at all
They come and go as if they're someone elses days
They come and leave you behind someone elses face
And it's harsher than yours, and colder than yours
They come in all quiet, sweep up, and then they leave
And you don't hear a single floor board creak
They're so much stronger than the friends you try to keep by your side.”

Somedays, Regina Spektor Recommended by Shay.

“There will come a day when our silence will speak louder then the voices that you are throttling today.”

August Spies

“Fade in, start the scene
Enter beautiful girl
But things are not what they seem
As we stand at the edge of the world

"Excuse me, sir,
But I have plans to die tonight
Oh, and you are directly in my way
And I bet you're gonna say it's not right"
My reply:
"Excuse me, miss
But do you have the slightest clue
Of exactly what you just said to me
And exactly who you're talking to?"

She said, "I don't care, you don't even know me"
I said, "I know but I'd like to change that soon, hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

"You make it sound so easy to be alive
But tell me, how am I supposed to seize this day
When everything inside me has died?"
My reply:
"Trust me, girl
I know your legs are pleading to leap
But I offer you this easy choice-
Instead of dying, living with me"

She said, "Are you crazy? You don't even know me."
I said, "I know, but I'd like to change that soon hopefully"
Yeah, we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed to act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets

I would be lying if I said that things would never get rough
And all this cliche motivation, it could never be enough
I could stand here all night trying to convince you
But what good would that do?
My offer stands, and you must choose

"All right, you win, but I only give you one night
To prove yourself to be better than my attempt at flight
I swear to god if you hurt me I will leap
I will toss myself from these very cliffs
And you'll never see it coming"
"Settle, precious, I know what you're going through
Just ten minutes before you got here I was gonna jump too"

Yeah we all flirt with the tiniest notion
Of self conclusion in one simplified motion
You see the trick is that you're never supposed act on it
No matter how unbearable this misery gets”

Self-Conclusion, The Spill Canvas Recommended by Ray.

“There are times when I'm just a shell
When I do not feel anything for anyone
All I feel is hollow and bruised
Used up and misused
Forced to be someone I don't want to be.”

Darkest Days, Stabbing Westward Recommended by elias.

“Everything I touch I break

I scratch and tear
Until it bleeds
I do not want
I only need.”

Everything I Touch, Stabbing Westward

“And it's been awhile
Since I can say that I wasn't addicted
And it's been awhile
Since I can say I love myself as well
And it's been awhile
Since I've gone and fucked things up just like I always do
And it's been awhile
But all that shit seems to disappear when I'm with you

And everything I can't remember
As fucked up as it all may seem
The consequences that I've rendered
I've gone and fucked things up again

Why must I feel this way?
Just make this go away
Just one more peaceful day!”

It's Been Awhile, Staind Recommended by meghan.