“Be what you would seem to be -- or if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

“lice came to a fork in the road.

'Which road do I take?' she asked.

'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire cat.

'I don't know,' Alice answered.

'Then,' said the cat, 'it doesn't matter.'”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

“Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

“The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'”

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

“'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedle-Dee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'”

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

“'I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?' Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.”

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

“'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'”

Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

“You must realize that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself.”

Souvenir of Japan, Angela Carter

“She was too thin for a Titian or a Renoir but she contrived a pale, smug Cranach Venus with a bit of net curtain would round her head and the necklace of cultured pearls they gave her when she was confirmed at her throat. After she read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, she secretly picked forget-me-nots and stuck them in her pubic hair.”

The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter

“The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood. O, my America, my new found land. She embarked on a tranced voyage, exploring the whole of herself, clambering her own mountain ranges, penetrating the moist richness of her secret valleys, a physiological Cortez, da Gama or Mungo Park. For hours she stared at herself, naked, in the mirror of her wardrobe; she would follow with her finger the elegant structure of her rib-cage, where the heart fluttered under the flesh like a bird under a blanket, and she would draw down the long line from breast-bone to navel (which was a mysterious cavern or grotto), and she would rasp her palms against her bud-wing shoulderblades. And then she would writhe about, clasp herself, laughing, sometimes doing cartwheels and handstands out of sheer exhilaration at the supple surprise of herself now she no longer a little girl.”

The Magic Toyshop, Angela Carter

“It's strange you never start out life with the intention of becoming bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief. Or a liar.”

to Maryann Burk Carver, Raymond Carver

“Anybody who talks about the future is a bastard, it's the present that counts. Invoking posterity is like making speeches to worms.”

Journey To The End Of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“True, we have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see–and history, as you know, is my business–everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobium, the automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community.”

Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.”

Don Quixote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes

“We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place; but as Sammy watched Joe, he felt the heartbreak of that day in 1935 when the Mighty Molecule had gone away for good.”

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon

“'...How are you feeling?'
'All right,' he said. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and I saw that he was trying to keep himself from smiling. 'I guess I'm feeling sort of glad I didn't kill myself tonight.'
I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder, and reached out with my other hand to open the door.
'What more could you ask for?' I said.”

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon Recommended by Keri.

“It was in this man's class that I first began to wonder if people who wrote fiction were not suffering from some kind of disorder--from what I've since come to think of...as the midnight disease. The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim--even if she or he writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon--feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown open, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, a fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep. This is in my opinion why writers--like insomniacs--are so accident-prone, so obsessed with the calculus of bad luck and missed opportunities, so liable to rumination and a concomitant inability to let go of a subject, even when urged repeatedly to do so.”

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon

“I like my demons. I consider them close personal friends. In fact, we enjoy each others company immensely.”

Chance [movie]

“When you're a little kid, you never think that you'll die. I mean, death is just some obscure, esoteric thing that you see on TV or read about in a book. Then one day you realize what it really is. Then nothing is ever the same again. From that day on, you're fucked.”

Chance [movie]

“Can anyone follow the ways of my pain? I live on the edge of a razor that cuts me to shreds as I move.”

Pain, Chandidás

“From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”

The High Window, Raymond Chandler

“Twenty-four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy car tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick, bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness.”

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler

“Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie--
Dust unto dust--
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell--
Too strong to strive--
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng--
The cowed and the meek--
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!”

Mourn Not the Dead, Ralph Chaplin

“When your life is never what you wanted
Not even halfway normal
Just tarnished and soiled
When in your reach
A framed and frozen moment
So far from perfection
Not truth or transcendence
Will set you free
Still you don't believe.”

Broken, Tracy Chapman Recommended by Anne.

“You got a fast car
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
We gotta make a decision
We leave tonight or live and die this way.”

Fast Car, Tracy Chapman Recommended by Ashley.