A

Disconnect and self-destruct one moment at a time. What's your rush now, everyone will have his day to die. Medicated, drama queen, picture perfect, numb belligerence. Narcissistic, drama queen, craving fame and all this decadence. Lying through your teeth again. Suicidal imbecile. -A Perfect Circle

Calm these hands before they snare another pill and drive another nail down another needy hole. Please release me. I am surrendering to the gravity and the unknown. Catch me, heal me, lift me back up to the sun. I choose to live. -A Perfect Circle

Voices in the darkness scream away my mental health. Can I ask a question to help me save me from myself? -A Perfect Circle

Time to feed the monster. I don't need another friend. Comfort is a mystery. Crawling out of my own skin. Just give me what I came for, then I'm out the door again. -A Perfect Circle

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. -Chinua Achebe

If it's free, it's advice; if you pay for it, it's counseling; if you can use either one, it's a miracle. -Jack Adams

The freedom now desired by many is not the freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry. -James Truslow Adams

Visions that can change the world, trapped inside an ordinary girl. She looks just like me, too afraid to dream out loud. -Yolanda Adams

Shattered, but I'm not broken. Wounded, but time will heal. Heavy the load, the cross I bear. Lonely the road I trod, I dare. Shaken, but here I stand. Weary, still I press on. Long are the nights, the tears I cry. Dark are the days, no sun in the sky. Yet still I rise, never to give up, never to give in, against all odds. Yet still I rise, high above the clouds. At times I feel low, yet still I rise. Sometimes I'm troubled, but not in despair. Struggling, I make my way through. Trials, they come to make me strong. I must endure, I must hold on. -Yolanda Adams

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. -Joseph Addison

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well. -Alfred Adler

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous. -Alfred Adler

The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized in the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and humanity. -Alfred Adler

Rape is the only crime in which the victim becomes the accused. -Freda Adler

Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell. -Renata Adler

Do you think someone who is about to rape you is going to stop and think about a condom? -Eli Adorn

I kept the right ones out and let the wrong ones in. Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins. There were times in my life when I was going insane, tryin' to walk through the pain. When I lost my grip and I hit the floor, yeah, I thought I could leave but couldn't get out the door. I was so sick and tired of living a lie. I was wishin' that I would die. -Aerosmith

The past is gone. It went by like dusk to dawn. Isn't that the way? Everybody's got their dues in life to pay. -Aerosmith

The ends don't always justify the means but I know what it takes to get what I need. I've got the cure when passive protest just won't do...just flick my Bic as I hold it to the fuse. -AFI

As a whole part of ‘psychological education’ it needs to be remembered that a neurosis can be valuable; also that ‘adjustment’ to a sick and insane environment is of itself not ‘health’ but sickness and insanity. -James Agee

Young girl, don't hide. You'll never change if you just run away. Young girl, just hold tight and soon you're gonna see your brighter day. Now in a world where innocence is quickly claimed, it's so hard to stand your ground when you're so afraid. No one reaches out a hand for you to hold. When you're lost outside look inside to your soul. When there's no one else, look inside yourself. Like your oldest friend, just trust the voice within -Christina Aguilera

I often wonder why I carry all this guilt when it's you that helped me put up all these walls I've built. Shadows stir at night through a crack in the door. The echo of a broken child screaming 'please no more'. -Christina Aguilera

Why must we all conceal what we think, how we feel? Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide? I won't pretend that I'm someone else for all time. When will my reflection show who I am inside? -Christina Aguilera

The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it. -Leo Aikman

She won't feel all the wounds inside her that time can never heal. The city lights shine seaward, swirling in a trance, her eyes upon the water, alone in her last dance. -Alan Parsons Project

My body a shell of human cells that contain me. Myself a kaleidoscope of thoughts that won’t set me free. -Alchemist

I am a being who is unique. What I discover depends what I seek. I wish to travel without to within, to discover existence outside of my skin. I feel and I smell and I taste and I see - understand reality. I'm living life's journey the best that I can - but often I find I don't know where I am. I often perceive the world out of context but wondering makes me perplexed. I look to balance and self harmony while I'm in life and while life is in me. -Alchemist

I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do it. -Louisa May Alcott

Far away, there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. -Louisa May Alcott

Painful as it may be, a significant emotional event can be the catalyst for choosing a direction that serves us - and those around us - more effectively. Look for the learning. -Louisa May Alcott

Girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits for the fun of it. -Louisa May Alcott

It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind. -Brian W. Aldiss

There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy. -Dante Alighieri

I wept not, so to stone within I grew. -Dante Alighieri

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. -Woody Allen

I found the secret to life - I'm ok when everything is not ok. -Tori Amos

That's what that night was about - mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and that now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again. -Tori Amos

Death is somewhere inside me. She was the kind of girl all the girls wanted to be, I believe, because of her acceptance of 'what is'. She keeps reminding me there is change in the 'what is' but change cannot be made 'til you accept the 'what is'. -Tori Amos

Rape's not something where you can go 'believe in love and peace my child and it'll be over'. Well fuck you, that isn't the answer! It's a great thought, ok, but you can go and stick crystals up your butt and get on with it. I'm all for love and peace but that is not the side of it I work on. If somebody were to talk about it or worse, joke about it, I would be ready to kill. That's not healing. -Tori Amos

I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets, looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets. -Tori Amos

How does a woman reconnect with her own body after rape and not associate sex with violence? -Tori Amos

I had to pretend I was a whore in my mind, thinking I was gonna get paid so I could be detached and stay in control. -Tori Amos

People out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves as I have done. -Tori Amos

I started finding the people inside me...the prostitute that's really angry because I judge her so harshly...the self righteous virgin who knows everything about sex and has never made love. -Tori Amos

Aggression starts where people suppress their feelings. At some point those emotions force their way out and that results in all sorts of trouble. -Tori Amos

Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say 'yes I'm sitting next to the butcher now' instead of saying 'there is no butcher'. Well there certainly is one. -Tori Amos

I am finding that vulnerability gives me great strength, because you're not hiding anymore. It's really about being a pioneer for myself, going into the places where I am not being taught. I have to teach myself. -Tori Amos

The idea is to rescue myself from the role of a victim, that I have a choice left. Though I can't change what has happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. -Tori Amos

People are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into the wound to discover what your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin. -Tori Amos

What sense does it make to load yourself with drugs so much that you are not noticing anything anymore? -Tori Amos

I see the dream and I see the nightmare and I believe you can't have the dream without the nightmare. -Tori Amos

You don't have to justify anything. Being pissed off is absolutely ok. -Tori Amos

I have so many different personalities in me, and I still feel lonely. -Tori Amos

If you really want a challenge, just deal with yourself. -Tori Amos

For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. -Tori Amos

I'm tired of being a rebel. Now I just want to be me. -Tori Amos

I've got your mind I said. She said I've your voice. I said you don't need my voice girl, you have your own but you never thought it was enough of. So they went years and years like sisters, blanket girls always there through that and this, there's nothing we cannot ever fix. I said can't stop what's coming can't stop what's on its way. -Tori Amos

We'll I'm not seventeen but I've cuts on my knees. Falling down as the winter takes one more cherry tree. She's been everybody else's girl maybe one day she'll be her own. -Tori Amos

Give me life. Give me pain. Give me myself again. -Tori Amos

These precious things let them bleed. Let them wash away. These precious things let them break their hold over me. -Tori Amos

‘Cause sometimes, I said sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these… Years go by will I still be waiting for somebody else to understand? Years go by if I'm stripped of my beauty and the orange clouds raining in my head. Years go by will I choke on my tears ‘til finally there is nothing left? One more casualty you know we're too easy. -Tori Amos

I got my rape hat on honey, but I always could accessorize. -Tori Amos

I say the world is sick. You say, ‘tell me what that makes us darlin’?” You see, you always find my faults faster than you find your own. -Tori Amos

'Fresh start' is not something I use. It's a cliche. I don't want anything to do with it. Everything in my past is part of who I am. There are calluses on your hands. -Tori Amos

Don't you like it? Fire? It cleanses. It definitely purifies...don't you love that smell? -Tori Amos

You know, he can never take your soul. There can be scars, but he will never take your soul. Your soul is yours. You take it back okay? You keep your soul. -Tori Amos

The dark side is not something most people think is inside them. -Tori Amos

You know when people smile too much? It's painful, I find that really painful. Happy is not very reliable. I'm trying to live like um, with a fierce calm. -Tori Amos

If a guy hits me, I will literally grab hold of his throat, put my teeth into it and rip until he is dead. -Tori Amos

I think that happiness is when you can let yourself feel every emotion you want at any time instead of being a lying little fuck. -Tori Amos

You have to accept that Sorrow will be there. You better make real good friends with her, because she's going to be there, especially as you get older. And after a while, Sorrow becomes the deepest part of the ocean. You know, there are times that Sorrow tells the dirtiest jokes. -Tori Amos

I think you're always striving for wholeness. I don't think you can put a time limit to it; it's really always another fragment coming your way as long as you're alive until you leave the planet. -Tori Amos

You know that saying, 'Bad things don't happen to good people'? That's a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level. -Tori Amos

Anger is healthy, but out of balance if it doesn't have compassion. -Tori Amos

My unreality is chiefly this: I have never felt much like a human being. It's a splendid feeling. -Margaret C. Anderson

People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within. -Ramona L. Anderson

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. -Maya Angelou

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. -Maya Angelou

Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. -Maya Angelou

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice. -Maya Angelou

I'm just thinking about the child in me that I sometimes feel inside. And I'm figuring out just what it is that makes me feel so small. Is it you that hurts me when I give myself every day and every night? -Anouk

I'm gonna get out of my shell, try without anybody's help, to loose this heavy load and get my life back on the road. I've seen the worst when I was down, only loneliness I found. Now I'm climbing to the top and I ain't never gonna stop. I'll carry on, though the road is long. I'm gonna get myself together and I'll hold on 'cause I am strong. Gonna try to make it better. -Anouk

It's about that time to leave it all behind you. You don't want to but life is passing by you. The hard knocks, got you twisted like dreadlocks. Catalogue your dark and set some new marks. I understand your body's filled with hesitation. Trust me it's gonna be a whole new situation. Turn this page I guess you know what to do…rise up like phoenix. I'm bringing out the beauty in you. -Anouk

Lady it's your turn now. Just walk the streets with your head up high. Oh baby, doesn't that feel right? So put a big smile on your face, you walk on straight, yeah. Tell the mother fuckers they were wrong. Isn't this your sweetest revenge? Feels good, hey I told you so! -Anouk

If I had just one moment at your expense, maybe all my misery, it would be well spent. -Angie Aparo

Is that why they call me sullen girl? They don't know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea. But he washed my shore and he took my pearl and left an empty shell of me. -Fiona Apple

From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion and I ran my hand o'er a strange inversion. A vacancy that just did not belong. The child is gone. -Fiona Apple

Please forgive me for my distance. The pain is evident in my existence. Please forgive me for my distance. The shame is manifest in my resistance. -Fiona Apple

How can I deal with this if he won't get with this? Am I gonna heal from this? He won't admit to it. Nothing to figure out. I gotta get him out. It's time the truth was out - that he don't give a shit about me. -Fiona Apple

Sometimes my mind don't shake and shift but most of the time it does. And I get to the place where I'm begging for a lift or I'll drown in the wonders and the was. And I'll be your girl if you say it's a gift and you give me some more of your drugs. Yeah, I'll be your pet, if you just tell me it's a gift 'cause I'm tired of whys - choking on whys. Just need a little because because. -Fiona Apple

I'm gonna fuck it up again. I'm gonna take another detour. Unpave my path. And if you wanna make sense, whatcha lookin' at me for? -Fiona Apple

It's psychologically and chemically impossible for me to be happy. I know I'm going to die young. -Fiona Apple

I definitely had an eating disorder. What was really frustrating for me was that everyone though I was anorexic, and I wasn't. I was really depressed and self-loathing. For me, it wasn't about being thin, it was about getting rid of the bait attached to my body. A lot of it came from the self-loathing that came from being raped -Fiona Apple

It was never, like, 'I am going to hurt myself and put myself in the hospital.' ...It is that I am going to give myself the pain that I need to feel to put the punctuation on this shit that's going inside. -Fiona Apple

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous. -Hannah Arendt

Kept it inside, didn't tell no one else, didn't even wanna admit it to yourself. And now your chest burns and your back aches from 15 years of holding the pain. And now you only have yourself to blame if you continue to live this way. -India Arie

The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass, and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral. -Aristippus

Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. -Aristotle

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil. -Aristotle

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill. -Aristotle

Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. -Usman B. Asif

I'm sorry. I don't think it's going to be okay this time. My heart has skipped its final beat. It's beating me down onto the floor. That must mean that the pills are working. The glass isn't half empty this time. I smashed it to the ground a long, long time ago. It shattered when it fell and I broke to pieces. Each shard's another reason, another way to give up. -Atreyu

Yesterday I forgot to breathe for like the 6th time this week. -Atreyu

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison. -Margaret Atwood

It makes me feel more in control, as if there is a choice, a decision that could be made one way or the other. -Margaret Atwood

Don't let the bastards grind you down. I repeat this to myself but it conveys nothing. You might as well say, ‘Don't let there be air’; or ‘Don't be’. -Margaret Atwood

You're sad because you're sad. It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical. Go see a shrink or take a pill, or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll you need to sleep. Well, all children are sad but some get over it. Count your blessings. Better than that, buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet. Take up dancing to forget. Forget what? Your sadness, your shadow, whatever it was that was done to you. -Margaret Atwood

But it's not easy being quiet and good, it's like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you've already fallen over; you don't seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength. -Margaret Atwood

A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together. -Margaret Atwood

I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You can't put on make-up, or dress yourself, or do your hair with any sort of fun or joy if you're doing it from a position of correction. -Kevyn Aucoin

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied. -Jane Austen

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? -Jane Austen

B

She tried to give a cry for help. She even blamed things on herself. But no one came to her aid. Nothing was wrong as far as we could tell. That's what we'd like to tell ourselves. -Babyface

Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows. -Gaston Bachelard

Take uppers, downers, blues and reds and yellows. Our brains are turning to Jello. We think that life is overrated. Loneliness was underestimated. We are looking forward to the days when we live inside of a purple haze. -Joan Baez

To the kid I thought was a little too young to know what sadness was, who took me out when I was down and set out to find the cause of why the lady had the blues and seemed on the verge of tears. I tell you that kid must have been around for a hundred and fifty years. -Joan Baez

My father warned me about men and liquor but he never said a word about women and cocaine. -Tallulah Bankhead

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward. -Margaret Barber

The lights are on but nobody’s home. My elevator doesn’t go to the top. I’m not playing with a full deck I’ve lost my marbles. I’m a few bricks short of a load but a full load always hurt my back. I flew over the cuckoo’s nest and I’m never ever coming back because I am crazy just like you. -Barenaked Ladies

My hands are locked up tight in fists. My mind is racing filled with lists of things to do and things I’ve done. Another sleepless night’s begun. -Barenaked Ladies

Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed. -Natalie Clifford Barney

When you've been locked up in a mental institution, people are going to ask questions. It was OK, because I didn't have to act perfect all the time. -Drew Barrymore

The truth is that you are never mended. You just learn how to deal with the problems that intensify your disease. -Drew Barrymore

That's the way I am - either I forget something immediately or I never forget it. -Samuel Beckett

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot. -Henry Ward Beecher

Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that citizens; on this side orphans, on that children. -Henry Ward Beecher

The mirror on the wall, staring face unknown to me, behind this mask I hide from thee, these tears impossible to see. This painted smile stains my face, impossible to see me break. -Before the Dawn

Even in the middle of great despair and crisis we can discover a place deep within which is totally beautiful, pure and powerful, and which is never victimized - it never has been and never will be. -Serge Berrington Behrens

Tired of living life in black and white. There's so much in-between. Like a rainbow in the sky, crying to be seen. When I open my eyes to find inspiration, I search for the best I can see. If I settle for less, I won't be the best I can be. -Regina Belle

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of. -Robert Benchley

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. -Stephen Vincent Benét

Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds. -Zacharty Bercovitz

Habits ... the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction... You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way - by finding that it is a means of satisfaction. -Juliene Berk

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin. -André Berthiaume

Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -Ambrose Bierce

Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it and privately we excuse and overlook it. -Victoria Billings

I got my shit together and found I couldn't lift it. -Roy Blount, Jr.

When we're deluded there's a world to escape. When we're aware, there's nothing to escape. -Bodhidharma

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words do permanent damage. -Eric Bogosian

I am not a glutton — I am an explorer of food. -Erma Bombeck

A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. -Edward de Bono

When the sun comes up, I have morals again - Elayne Boosler

You know, the anorectic is always convinced she is taking up too much space, eating too much, wanting food too much. I've never felt that way but I've often felt that I was too much - too much emotion, too much need, too loud and demanding, too much there, if you know what I mean. -Susan Bordo

There are two ways of meeting difficulties. You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them. -Phyllis Bottome

Oh I am young but I have aged. Waited long to seize the day. All things said and plenty done. Oh I am young but I have a past. Traveled far to find the start. Yes I am scared and I've been burnt, but life is short. -Butterfly Boucher

Tearless grief bleeds inwardly. -Christian Nevell Bovee

I'm just fourteen. Oh, I love it when he says so seriously, with his gun in my back, honey make love to me. -Bow Wow Wow

Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. -Nathaniel Branden

I have learned to retreat at the first sign of danger. I mean, why wait around, if it's just to surrender? Ambition, I have found, can only lead to failure. -Bright Eyes

So that's how I learned the lesson that everyone is alone and your eyes must do some raining if you're ever going to grow. -Bright Eyes

And I give myself three days to feel better or else I swear I'll drive right off a fucking cliff because if I can't learn to make myself feel better how can I expect anyone else to give a shit? -Bright Eyes

Well, I’ve cried and you would think I'd feel better for it. But the sadness just sleeps and it stays in my spine for the rest of my life. And I’ve learned and you’d think I’d be something more now. But it just goes to show it is not what you know, it's what you were thinking at the time. -Bright Eyes

And I find that life is easier when it is just a blur with no details to confuse who or what or where I was. So when the ending comes the full regret will seem obscure. -Bright Eyes

You're always looking for something to sniff smoke or swallow. Calling over next door, see what they've got. But you would settle for anything that would make your brain slow down or stop this circle of thoughts you chase before they catch back up with you. And your parents notice your thinning face, all the weight you've lost, all the weight you’re losing. You said, ‘I'm done feeling like a skeleton, no more sleep walking dead.’ You're going to wake from this coma. You're going to crawl from this bed you've made. Stop counting on the camera that hangs around your neck, ‘cause it will never remember what you choose to forget. -Bright Eyes

Maybe it's me who's this unstable, always obsessed about the end. Why can't I let what happens happen and just enjoy the time I spend? Oh, how I wish it was that easy but when there is no point to anything you know it gets a bit confusing. Why is it that I keep going? -Bright Eyes

All I do is just lay in bed and hide under the covers. Yeah I know I should be brave but I'm just too afraid of all this change and it's too hard to focus through all this doubt. I keep making these to-do lists but nothing gets crossed out. -Bright Eyes

It's your naked body on white velour but there's no feeling, just weight on you. But you get nauseous now, as he speaks to you, such proper language, for acts so cruel. He says we all follow the rules, we can't go and break them now can we, for you? -Bright Eyes

But just don't ask about my appetite. I didn't lose it tonight. No, it's been gone half my life. -Bright Eyes

So I talk, but no one can relate to the fear I had when I was younger. Somehow I knew I'd end up empty and alone. We all accept in the same tired way the gentle shift of continuous change. We confuse all the things that we say, to ourselves. The things we say to each other, always a lie, but at least we find some comfort for a while. -Bright Eyes

Deliver me, out of my sadness. Deliver me, from all of the madness. Deliver me, courage to guide me. Deliver me, strength from inside me. -Sarah Brightman

It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line. -Ashleigh Brilliant

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. -Ashleigh Brilliant

I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack at once. -Ashleigh Brilliant

Try to relax and enjoy the crisis. -Ashleigh Brilliant

Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story. -Ashleigh Brilliant

I can do only one thing at a time, but I can avoid doing many things simultaneously. -Ashleigh Brilliant

What is interesting about self-analysis is that it leads nowhere — it is an art form in itself. -Anita Brookner

The ruins of what was once viewed as a perfect childhood lay stretched out before me, close enough to touch yet farther then I dared to imagine. The world had turned grey as if the earth itself had taken note that I too had turned grey. The bubble that was once my perfect existence had burst like the rest of them. My life was just one big trembling bubble waiting to be burst by one of those shattered truths. For it was as sharp as a shard of the broken mirror that I stood and stared into, my reflection as ugly and distorted as my life had come to be. -Elsa Brooks

Don't judge me too soon, I'm not trying to be understood. I'm not looking for your pity, I'm just the product of a fucked up childhood. If only they could see, if only they tried. They should want to get to know me. If they could just stop trying to decide whether I'm good, whether I'm bad. What's my mood? Am I happy or sad? I've never been either, I dont feel anymore, I'm numb to the pain. -Elsa Brooks

You know it's really gettin' to you when you take to tellin' lies. And you can try to fool your friends but you can't look 'em in the eye. There ain't no standin' tall in the shadow of the shame, when everybody knows that you're a victim of the game. -Garth Brooks

No matter how fast I run, I can't get away from me. -Jackson Browne

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself. -Rita Mae Brown

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present - which seldom happens to us. -Jean De La Bruyere

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. -Jean de la Bruyere

Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then; life is dull without it. -Pearl S. Buck

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. -Buddha

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned. -Buddha

Hunger is the supreme disease. -Buddha

Heredity is nothing but stored environment. -Luther Burbank

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all it's powers of acting and reasoning as fear. -Edmund Burke

Do you feel the way you hate? Do you hate the way you feel? Always closer to the flame. ever closer to the blade. -Bush

Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. -Samuel Butler

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone. -Lord Byron

No ear can hear nor tongue can tell the tortures of the inward hell! -Lord Byron

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. -Lord Byron

C

Children's bodies aren't like automobiles with the assailant's fingerprints lingering on the wheel. The world of sexual abuse is quintessentially secret. It is the perfect crime. -Beatrix Campbell

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. -Albert Camus

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. -Albert Camus

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. -Albert Camus

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence. -Albert Camus

Help him beat me down, again. It’s all I know. So you want for me, some things we never see. Left alone to fill time. So empty all your thoughts now, turn around your hate, take a look at me. Hang on security. It’s all been overrated, this life you live, it’s not your own. There’s no one here to help you. -Candlebox

Now maybe some would say your life was sad but you lived it anyway. And so maybe your friends they stand around, they watch you crumble as you falter to the ground. -Candlebox

I don't care if you use me again. I don't care if you abuse me again. -The Cars

And I don't mean to flatter myself but everything I touch turns to shit. If there's one thing that I do well this would probably be it -Edie Carey

Caught in the grips of addiction. The future reads like fiction with contradictions and crystal ball predictions. You gotta want it from within. Yearn for your soul to strive. Break free from the chains that bind and hide the beautiful person you are inside. Part of you is torn between last night and this mornin'. Voices in your head are callin' but your mind is lookin' on to somethin' better -Jule Carey

She feels his love from the back of his hand. She feels she's nothin', gotta take what she can. Hidin' the pain, smilin' through tears. Drawin' on sweet memories helps her through the years. -Jule Carey

Innocent children stand on by. Don't know what to do. They watch their mother cry. They think it's their fault but little do they know it's just another way he'll break their hearts real slow. -Jule Carey

When you're with him it's like you're hypnotized. He's got you brainwashed to believe his lies. The pain runs deep behind your eyes, like a rainbow that's fading, movin' into the night. -Jule Carey

You know we live our lives, it seems, clingin' to the same old schemes. Isn't that what life is all about, always wantin' what you're without? I'll find a way to try to believe again, find a way to chase my dreams again. To feel the things I felt before, to share a heart and so much more. -Jule Carey

Tears your barriers down when home is where the war is now. Why judge yourself so harshly when all you really are is worthy to be so happy in this journey called life? Along the way you've fought your battles. Rainy days were filled with sadness. Those clouds will blow away, cause, the sun rises for you everyday. Don't take more than you give. Some take all that they can get from you and still they want more. -Jule Carey

Sometimes you're tired of standin' alone. They point the finger sayin' you're the strong one, but you feel you need a heart to lean on. Look around the scene, if ya don't smile you'll scream. Burnin' out of time and luck. Walk the distance. Scream resistance. -Jule Carey

Battle scars born to the soul. Survival is the only goal. World around with blades abound wanting always to cut us down. -Jule Carey

We do not go to bed in single pairs; even if we choose not to refer to them, we still drag there with us the cultural impedimenta of our social class, our parents' lives, our bank balances, our sexual and emotional expectations, our whole biographies — all the bits and pieces of our unique existences. -Angela Carter

Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body. -Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Why are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they will blur together in people's minds -sexandviolence- until we can't tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, 'The mob became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex.' -Dick Cavett

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. -Nicolas de Chamfort

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them. -Coco Chanel

Can't say what I mean. Can't love from the heart. Can't trust in the mercy and the goodness in the world. Can't learn to accept that it's all right to struggle with the limits of this ordinary life. -Tracy Chapman

This life is a crime, a blessing and a curse. Chosen and unwanted, displaced and usurped. I'd run away but there is nowhere to go. So I'll stand and fight and hope and pray that the best is yet to come and we ain't seen nothing yet. -Tracy Chapman

Hunger only for a taste of justice. Hunger only for a world of truth 'cause all you have is your soul. Here I am waiting for a better day, a second chance, a little luck to come my way. A hope to dream, a hope that I can sleep again and wake in the world with a clear conscience and clean hands. 'Cause all that you have is your soul. -Tracy Chapman

You see, I’ve been climbing stairs but mostly stumbling down. You see, I’ve been reaching high but always losing ground. You see, I’ve conquered hills but I still have mountains to climb. And right now, right now, I’m doing the best I can, at this point in my life. -Tracy Chapman

Touched the mirror broke the surface of the water. Saw my true self all illusions shattered. -Tracy Chapman

Insanity is doing the same thing in the same way and expecting a different outcome. -Chinese Proverb

Do not want others to know what you have done? Better not have done it anyway. -Chinese Proverb

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict. It is the need to escape from a harsh reality. -Shirley Chisholm

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future. -Deepak Chopra

Our thinking and our behavior are always in anticipation of a response. It is therefore fear-based. -Deepak Chopra

I've been down in the shit so long that everything looks like up. -Clawfinger

There is a connection between neurosis and talent but there is also a connection between genius and mental illness. -John Cleese

Scars are great. They're this outward symbol of some personal pain. Just by looking at someone's scar, you know that person has suffered. Usually, or maybe almost exclusively, medically. But what about the suffering insane? We have no scars. That's why we have to make them ourselves. -Emily Colas

You can mind fuck something until it makes you crazy and it's all wasted energy. Spending so much time in your head. Because, the fact is, no matter what spin you use, you just don't know. -Emily Colas

Now I'm all alone. Kept the pain inside. Wanna touch the world 'cause I'm breathing fire. -Cold

Was it life I betrayed for the shape that I'm in? It's not hard to fail, it's not easy to win. Did I drink too much? Could I disappear? And there's nothing that's left but wasted years. -Cold

I'm feeling crossed. I take it inside, burn up the pain. My thoughts are strange. -Cold

Come on - oh my star is fading. And I see no chance of release and I know I'm dead on the surface but I'm screaming underneath. -Coldplay

She said that time is unfair to a woman her age. Now that wisdom has come, everything else fades. She said she realizes she's seen her better days. She said she can't look back to her days of youth. What she thought were lies she later found was truth. She said her daddy had dreams but he drank them away. And her mother's to blame for the way she is today. -Collective Soul

I know the reason why you keep your silence. No, you don't fool me. Well the hurt doesn't show but the pain still grows. It's no stranger to you or me. -Phil Collins

Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always, for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live. -Charles Caleb Colton

It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do. -Charles Caleb Colton

There was drama enough in my turbulent past: Tears and passion - I’ve used up a tankful. No news is good news, and long may it last, if nothing much happens, I’m thankful. -Wendy Cope

Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones. -Stephen R. Covey

If I had just one little spark inside of me I wouldn't be so scared of the dark side of me. I refuse to shrink and be something that I'm not just to be who you are, just to get what you have got. I won't accept restraint. I will not hide behind fear. I will be afraid but I'll stand up. I will stay right here. -Allison Crowe

You know I hold these in and I take them for myself. I'm covered in guilt but it's not my own. There isn't any reason for me to feel like I'm dying. I'm done with being afraid. I'm done with lying. And I am not an angel. I'm more like Mona Lisa. There's something hiding in me, there's always something behind my smile. -Allison Crowe

I woke up at half past 12, half in and out of dreaming. I could barely hear but I think that I was screaming. I tried to call out to you ‘be careful, they're right behind you’ but you turned to me and said, I'm dying and it's too late for anyone to save me. Step back for a moment and watch what's going on around you. You're so concerned with pleasing everyone, what about you? -Allison Crowe

I wanted the ocean to cover over me. I wanna sink slowly without getting wet. Maybe someday I won't be so lonely and I'll walk on water every chance I get. -Counting Crows

Wait for everyone to go away and in a dimly lit room where you've got nothing to hide, say your goodbyes. Tell yourself we'll read a note that says 'I'm sorry everyone, I'm tired of feeling nothing, goodbye.' Wash your face, dry your eyes 'cause you've been waiting a long time. You've been waiting a long, long time to fall down on your knees. -Counting Crows

The smell of hospitals in winter and the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters, but no pearls. -Counting Crows

I'm not sleeping anymore. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 a.m. All alone again but I've been through all this shit before. Spend my nights in self-defense, cry about my innocence but I ain't all that innocent anymore. -Counting Crows

She don't want no one around. She don't want anybody to see what she looks like when she's down ‘cause the truth's a sad place to be. -Counting Crows

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. -Norman Cousins

At sunrise I fight to stay asleep 'cause I don't want to leave the comfort of this place. 'Cause there's a hunger, a longing to escape from the life I live when I'm awake. -Creed

The peace is dead in my soul, I have blamed reasons for. My intentions, poor. Yes I'm the one who, the only one who would carry on this far -Creed

'What's wrong?' 'Why don't you get out and do something?' 'You'd feel better if you got up and took a shower.' When I've started down that long black spiral into depression, such well-intentioned comments are more hurtful than helpful. The first two simply have no answer and all three require answers or actions of which I am incapable and thus feed my feeling of hopelessness. -Kathy Cronkite

It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you've got. -Sheryl Crow

I've been living in a sea of anarchy. I've been living on coffee and nicotine. I've been wondering if all the thing I've seen were ever real, were ever really happening. -Sheryl Crow

You are a raging sea I pull myself out every day. I plea insanity 'cause I can't leave but I can't stay. You say, won't you come find me? And yes is what I say. You don't bring me anything but down. -Sheryl Crow

The only person more cynical than a drunk is a reformed drunk. -James Crumley

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive. -ee cummings

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. -Marie Curie

D

When such intense anger and hatred arises, it obliterates the best part of your brain, which is the ability to judge between right and wrong, and the long-term and short-term consequences of your actions. Your power of judgment becomes totally inoperable, it can no longer function. It is almost like you've become insane. -The Dalai Lama

Become addicted to constant and never-ending self improvement. -Anthony D’Angelo

She says goodbye, I can't live knowing what this world has to offer to me ‘cause in the end it doesn't matter. In the end it's all shattered. -Daughter Darling

No matter where the body is, the mind is free to go elsewhere. -W.H. Davies

You're just too high to see the point. You think your name is ‘pass the joint’ -Gavin DeGraw

Spending all my precious time. I wish I could press rewind, but it’s just play. Feels like fast-forward some days. Maybe it’s just a phase. Maybe I’m losing my mind -Gavin DeGraw

I’m surrounded by liars everywhere I turn. I’m surrounded by imposters everywhere I turn. I’m surrounded by an identity crisis everywhere I turn. Am I the only one to notice? I can’t be the only one who’s learned. I don’t want to be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately. All I have to do is think about me and I have peace of mind. I’m tired of looking ‘round rooms wondering what I gotta do or who I’m supposed to be. I don’t want to be anything other than me. -Gavin DeGraw

Stare at a memory. You, through the grapevine, heard the truth. It's good to learn from your mistakes, but that only works in youth. -Gavin DeGraw

Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted. -Don Delillo

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. -W. Edwards Deming

So they held her down while they took their turn. They had to break her. Said she was evil and she would burn. Then they raped her. -Destroyer 666

It is no exaggeration to say that among all living creatures, only man, because of his prehensile appendages, is capable of rape in the full meaning of this term that is, sexual possession of the female against her will. -Helen Deutsch

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. -Emily Dickinson

Pain has an element of blank; It cannot recollect when it began, or if there were a day when it was not. It has no future but itself; its infinite realms contain its past, enlightened to perceive new periods of pain. -Emily Dickinson

I just want to feel safe in my own skin. I just want to be happy again. I just want to feel deep in my own world. But I'm so lonely, I don't even want to be with myself anymore. -Dido

I am not an angry girl but it seems I've got everyone fooled. Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger and never to their own fear. And imagine you're a girl just trying to finally come clean, knowing full well they'd prefer you were dirty and smiling. -Ani DiFranco

I don't think I am strong enough to do this much longer. God, I wish I was stronger. -Ani DiFranco

I'm sounding out the silence, avoiding all the words. I'm afraid I've said too much. I'm afraid of who has heard me. -Ani DiFranco

I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired. And my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired. I make such a good statistic someone should study me now. Somebody's got to be interested in how I feel 'cause I'm here and I'm real. -Ani DiFranco

The windows of my soul are made of one way glass. Don't bother looking into my eyes. If there's something you want to know, just ask. -Ani DiFranco

I've mapped out my course, looks like it's uphill. I've got a heavy heart to carry but a very strong will. It's just hard to travel in the shadow of regret. In fact, it's so hard that I haven't actually left yet. -Ani DiFranco

At night when you're asleep self hatred's going to creep in. And try to blame it on the devil whose bed you sleep in. And don't tell me what they did to you, as if you had no choice. -Ani DiFranco

One of these days you're gonna push too hard. We'll go on like we always do 'til you go too far. Yeah one of these days it's gonna reach the top, then it's all gonna spill and it's not gonna stop. Some people wear their smile like a disguise. Those people who smile too much - watch the eyes. I know it 'cause I'm like that a lot. You think everything is ok and it is, 'til it's not. -Ani DiFranco

I'd rather suffer the consequences of truth than of silence. -Ani DiFranco

I was floating above myself, watching her do just what you wanted. Poor little friendly ghost wondering why her whole house feels haunted. -Ani DiFranco

Real is real regardless of what you try to say or say away. Real is real relentless while words distract and dismay. Words that change their tune, though the story remains the same. Words that fill me quickly and then are slow to drain. Dialogues that dither down reminiscent of the way it likes to rain. Every screen a smoke screen. Oh, to dream just for a moment. The picture outside the frame. -Ani DiFranco

I focus on the quiet now and occasionally I'll fall asleep somehow and emptiness has its solace, in that there's nothing left to take. -Ani DiFranco

There’s a certain window of time in the middle of the night out in Middle America where there’s no bar open and nothing on TV. If you don’t want to do too many drugs, you have to start bodily mutilation. -Ani DiFranco

There's never been an endeavor so strange as trying to slow the blood in my veins to keep my face blank as a stone that just sank until not a ripple remains. -Ani DiFranco

But a lesson must be lived in order to be learned, and the clarity to see and stop this now that is what I've earned. -Ani DiFranco

Survivors are part turtle. We are part potato bug. We know enough to go fetal 'til it's still up above. And you gotta crawl through the desert between when you hear it and when you can play it with your hands just to rendezvous with whoever you are when you finally understand. -Ani DiFranco

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries. -Everett McKinley Dirksen

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for the truth. -Benjamin Disraeli

How do you sleep when you live with you lies? Out of your mouth, up from your mind. That kind of thinking starts a chain reaction. You are a time bomb ticking away. You need to release what you're feeling inside. Let out the beast that you're trying to hide. -Disturbed

Now I'm reaching out and I'm feeling nothing. You have created a rift within me. Now there have been several complications that have left me feeling nothing. I might say you were wrong to take it from me. Left me feeling nothing. Crawling now, I'm beaten down. Tortured now and I'm feeling nothing. -Disturbed

The tapestry of history has no point at which you can cut it and leave the design intelligible. -Dorothea Dix

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. -Phil Donahue

Is not all life pathetic and futile? ...We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow, or worse than a shadow - misery. -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Once the stone you're crawling under is lifted off your shoulders, once the cloud that's raining over your head disappears, the noise that you'll hear is the crashing down of hollow years. -Dream Theater

Abuse victims are always the best actors. They have to be to spend their whole lives with the pain and shame, pretending there's nothing wrong. It's the greatest performance of all. -Richard Dreyfuss

There was a knife in the drawer. There was blood on the floor and everybody's looking for another way out. I don't want it anymore. -Drowningman

Tell me can you see these tears in my eyes. Are the cameras picking up the dying inside? Needles last night, did they stitch or did they stab? As long as we look good it can't be all bad. -Drowningman

Under everything, something that you can't see. I can't even believe something is wrong with me. You swear that all of this is real but sometimes I can't seem to feel. Nothing ever satisfies. One day I will realize. Am I really scared of something that I don't know? Do you even care what's really wrong? -Drowning Pool

All of the things that have happened, I'm surely to blame. Accept your fate, then you'll be well. But the truth is that it never ends. You can say that you've never been through hell, but you'll always lose another friend. Never felt so unimportant. Everything I've ever said has been taken in vain. Little girl so scared and frightened. All of the things that I do are still subject to change. -Drowning Pool

Try to find a way to fight the pain but it seems there's no way around it. Reaching for the sun but finding rain. I know I'll always be grounded. So much I have brought upon myself, can't believe that I'm still here. -Drowning Pool

My best excuse is that I'm drained from everything that keeps me sane. My sickness keeps me in control from everything you'll never know - what you say I could have been. -Drowning Pool

Accept your fate, then you'll be well, but the truth is that it never ends. You can say that you've been through hell but you'll always lose another friend. Never felt so unimportant. Everything I've ever said has been taken in vain. Little girl so scared and frightened. All of the things that I do are still subject to change. -Drowning Pool

Do I really want this? Sometimes I scare myself. I just can't let it go. Can you believe it? Everything happens for reasons I just don't know. -Drowning Pool

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. -Fr. Alfred D'Souza

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity. -Jean Dubuffet

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. -Alexandre Dumas

I'm allergic to food. Every time I eat it breaks out into fat. -Jennifer Greene Duncan

A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt. -Emile Durkheim

As long as there is rape there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality or freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or who you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in. -Andrea Dworkin

We need to end rape. We need to end incest. We need to end battery. We need to end prostitution and we need to end pornography. That means that we need to refuse to accept that these are a natural phenomena that just happen. -Andrea Dworkin

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air; it is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of 'I am afraid', we say, 'I don't want to' or 'I don't know how' or 'I can't'. -Andrea Dworkin

We have a double standard, which is to say, a man can show how much he cares by being violent — see, he's jealous, he cares — a woman shows how much she cares by how much she's willing to be hurt; by how much she will take; how much she will endure; how suicidal she's prepared to be. -Andrea Dworkin

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do. -Wayne Dyer

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy. -Wayne Dyer

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to some place else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality. -Wayne Dyer

Chaos is a friend of mine. -Bob Dylan

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds. -Bob Dylan

Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'. I just might tell you the truth. -Bob Dylan

Please don't talk about tomorrow. I'm really not one to care. This world is filled with too much sorrow that nobody's heart should bear. -Bob Dylan

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear. Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer. The sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way, to ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay. I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame. And every time I pass that way I always hear my name. -Bob Dylan

My road it might be rocky. The stones might cut my face. But as some folks ain't got no road at all,they gotta stand in the same old place. Hey, hey, so I guess I'm doin' fine. -Bob Dylan

E

Since we were parted I know I have changed. You'll see the blood that was shed in the lines on my face. But now that I've turned my back on the fight, I'm gonna steal back my life like a thief in the night. –eastmountainsouth

Shame is closely related to guilt, but there is a key qualitative difference. No audience is needed for feelings of guilt, no one else need to know, for the guilty person is his own judge. Not so for shame. The humiliation of shame requires disapproval or ridicule by others. If no one ever learns of a misdeed there will be no shame, but there still might be guilt. Of course, there may be both. The distinction between shame and guilt is very important, since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. The wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession, but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it. -Paul Ekman

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity. -George Eliot

Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment. -T. S. Eliot

Hell is oneself; Hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone. -T. S. Eliot

We see adolescents mourning for a lost childhood. -David Elkind

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. -Henry Havelock Ellis

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some of your grief you have cured, and lived to survive; but what torments of pain have you endured that haven't as yet arrived. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

But fire will always burn through skin and forgery and answer when you won't. -Emery

Too many mental problems got me snortin' coke and smokin' weed again. -Eminem

'Cause every time I go to try to leave something keeps pullin' on my sleeve. I don't wanna, but I gotta stay. These drugs really got a hold of me. 'Cause every time I try to tell them no they won't let me ever let them go. -Eminem

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. -Nathaniel Emmons

Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork. -English Proverb

Don't care what people say, just follow your own way. Don't give up and use the chance to return to innocence. That's not the beginning of the end. That's the return to yourself. The return to innocence. -Enigma

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy. -Nora Ephron

Anger is a sign that something needs to change. ... Learning to use anger is no easy task. Yet the alternative -- letting anger use us -- makes us prisoners of our own minds. Anger is not the enemy, and we're not helpless in the face of it. It is only an energy -- one that, with practice, we can harness for our good. -Mark Epstein

They feed you on the guilt to keep you humble, keep you low. -Melissa Etheridge

I'm frightened by what I see but somehow I know that there's much more to come. Immobilized by my fear and soon to be blinded by tears. I can stop the pain if I will it away. -Evanescence

I still remember the world from the eyes of a child. Slowly those feelings were clouded by what I know now. Where has my heart gone? An uneven trade for the real world. I want to go back to believing in everything and knowing nothing at all. -Evanescence

Bound at every limb by my shackles of fear. Sealed with lies through so many tears. Lost from within, pursuing the end, I fight for the chance to be lied to again. -Evanescence

How can you see into my eyes like open doors? Leading you down into my core where I’ve become so numb. Without a soul my spirit sleeping somewhere cold, until you find it there and lead it back home. Wake me up inside. Wake me up inside. Call my name and save me from the dark. Bid my blood to run before I come undone. Save me from the nothing I’ve become. -Evanescence

I've been looking in the mirror for so long that I've come to believe my soul's on the other side. Oh, the little pieces falling shatter. Shards of me, too sharp to put back together, too small to matter, but big enough to cut me into so many little pieces. -Evanescence

You hold the answers deep within your own mind. Consciously, you've forgotten it. That's the way the human mind works. Whenever something is too unpleasant, too shameful for us to entertain, we reject it. We erase it from our memories but the answer is always there. -Evanescence

Scared to death to face reality. No one seems to hear your hidden cries. You'll have to face yourself alone but where will you go with no one left to save you from yourself? You can't escape the truth. I realize you're afraid but you can't abandon everyone. You can't escape. -Evanescence

Your face, it haunts my once pleasant dreams. Your voice, it chased away all the sanity in me. These wounds won't seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There's just too much that time cannot erase. -Evanescence

To inflict cruelties on defenseless creatures, or condone such acts, is to abuse one of the cardinal tenets of a civilized society - reverence for life. -Jon Evans

Hey, I don't even know you and I hate you. See all I know is that my girlfriend used to date you. How would you feel if she held you down and raped you? Tried and tried but she never could escape you. -Eve

You treat me like I am on fire, like I'm something to eat. You make me hate what I see when I see me. -Everclear

Promises mean everything when you're little and the world is so big. I just don't understand how you can smile with all those tears in your eyes and tell me everything is wonderful now. -Everclear

She is perfect in that fucked up way that all the magazines seem to want to glorify these days. -Everclear

You put yourself in stupid places, yes I think you know it's true, situations where it's easy to look down on you. Think you like to be the victim. Think you like to be in pain. I think you make yourself a victim almost every single day. -Everclear

I've seen the good side of bad and the down side of up and everything between. I licked the silver spoon, drank from the golden cup and smoked the finest green. -Everlast

I'm tired of being me, and I don't like what I see. I'm not who I appear to be. -Extreme

Looks like my brighter side has gotten a bit darker. I must have stepped over my four-leaf clover 'cause someone drank my half-filled cup of water. -Extreme

Can someone tell me why I'm not better off dead? I no longer deny these thoughts filling my head. I'm left to decide, for this path I've been led, if there's more to life than just death. -Extreme

F

Insomnia is a gross feeder. It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking. -Clifton Fadiman

Crime expands according to our willingness to put up with it. -Barry J. Farber

When the body weeps tears of blood, we need to wonder what terrible sorrows cannot be spoken. When food that had tasted good suddenly feels like poison and has to be purged from the body, we should wonder what traumatic experiences exist that cannot be contained, metabolized, and integrated.... The body speaks of that which cannot be said in words, of secrets, lies, and trust that has been broken. -Sharon K. Farber

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets. -William Faulkner

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness; not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it. -William Feather

My pain is your pleasure. My agony excites you. Desperate for a change but change comes within. I'm not staying, not around you. I'm stronger than you think, much stronger than you. -Fear Factory

It's not so much that we are afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it's that place in-between that we fear. It's like being between trapezes. It's Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There's nothing to hold on to. -Marilyn Ferguson

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by agreement or by emotional appeal. -Marilyn Ferguson

Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self- knowledge if you explore them. -Marilyn Ferguson

There seemed to be endless obstacles... it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear. -Joanna Field

Suffocation, one breath is all I need to. One breath is all I need for strength to set myself free. Don't let me destroy myself. -Figure Four

All the pain inside. They put the poison in me. All the pain I caused. Poison in me. I saw everything they did. Somehow it seemed true. I took in everything they gave. Somehow it seemed true. How far can I go 'til it's too late? -Figure Four

And still I find I don't stop. I'll make a choice without thought and I move along. Forward. Everything counts. I could be the one who lives in fear. One who never takes the chance. Where would I be today? Living a life always scared of consequence. Where would I be today? I think for me it's balance. I ask myself today, what would I change if I could? Some things are unforgettable. Never fade away. -Figure Four

And every time I talk to you it sounds like you’re caught in a psychological flu. Don’t ever let them see you cheat, don’t ever let them see you bleed, don’t ever let them shake your hand, don’t ever let them believe that scam. Skinny, and it will make you cry. Skinny, and it makes you soft inside. Skinny, at least you will not die. -Filter

I've walked along the edge. I've seen my death. It came before my eyes and blinded by the light I realized too long I've been without the feeling of alive. Lost inside the fog I've been, lost inside my mind. And I forgot that I am free. I can be what I want to be. -Sarah Fimm

Since you said its fine I might believe. Dirty girls are easy to deceive. A penny for your thoughts or just to take your clothes off. I’d rather dull the pain than stand out in the rain to catch the virus. That seems to be the undercurrent of my insanity, the lowest layer that has been fused beneath my cycle of abuse. -Sarah Fimm

Every single minute takes an hour when you’re in the power of the beast. There’s hate breeding hatred inside of my head and there’s not that much left to be said in the red. Crying out, at the edge looking down. When you’ve fallen below all the shit you’ve been fed and you feel like your gonna go mad then you know you have come out alive more than dead. -Sarah Fimm

Crawl inside of me just enough to hurt this body. I know that you know how. Come inside of me you know it's exactly what I need. Your entourage is waiting by the car while I sit here bonding with some brand new scars. -Sarah Fimm

Not stronger, you're gripping onto the past, recalling what happened, happened too fast. His image is burning into your mind. You know you will never leave this behind. -Finger Eleven

Your spirit's so thin there's nothing left to take. Without rhyme or reason you point the other way. I don't need to watch as you go down in flames. -Finger Eleven

Is anything coming clearer smashing your mirror? Still you can see you're guilty. How far down would you fall if you never came up again? 'Cause you're so sick of it all and you want to change everything. Just how deep would you go to see through it all? -Finger Eleven

Morality would frown upon and decency look down upon the scapegoat fate's made of me. But I tell you now, my judge and jurors, intentions couldn't have been purer. My case is easy to see. I'm not looking for a clearer conscience, peace of mind after what I've been through. And before we talk of any repentance, try walking in my shoes. -Finger Eleven

Felt that I belonged and now I feel that gone. Where it all went wrong, I traced it all along. Back here again. There was something calling me to negativity. Dark covering me, shrouding every scene I’m cast in. Careful what you’re feeling on the inside. You should try to remember the good times and the high life. Are you feeling all right? Careful when you're feeling out of your mind. You should try to remember the strong lines in the spotlight ‘til you're feeling all right. -Finger Eleven

Usually a person has more faith in their fear than faith in their future. -Doug Firebaugh

Once I lived on a shelf and I painted pictures of the world I'd see. I convinced myself that I had some kind of objectivity. But when you're so far gone that the hurt starts to show, when you're so far off, I thought by now you'd know I was just hiding from myself. -Stefanie Fix

Everything comes and goes in extremes. You say you know what you want, you just don't know what you mean. And you would take it on faith if there was something to believe but all of life's changes just leave you empty. -Stefanie Fix

I was trying to be something when my own skin caved right in And there I stood flesh and blood, looking like the thing I really was - a hollow mess of chaos and stress. You can run but you sure as hell cannot hide from yourself. Now the more I become all that I am the less I believe of what I understand. The world can sure play tricks on you. It can lift you up and tell you everything is fine, when it don't feel right. And you don't have the guts to trust your own insight. Well take it from me you can always see the truth when you want to. -Stefanie Fix

I am learning not to say I was raped, but a man raped me. Grammatically, this is the difference between the passive and active voice. As I often tell my writing students, the active voice is preferred unless you are trying to hide responsibility. -Patricia Weaver Francisco

They mustn't know my despair, I can't let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn't bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I'm showing off; when I'm silent they think I'm ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I get a good idea, lazy if I'm tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. etc. -Anne Frank

The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for. -Viktor E.Frankl

I have found little that is good about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think. -Sigmund Freud

We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other. -Sigmund Freud

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill. -Sigmund Freud

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why this illness was bound to come upon you and perhaps you will thenceforth avoid falling ill. -Sigmund Freud

From error to error one discovers the entire truth. -Sigmund Freud

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger, it will soon have your whole hand. -Sigmund Freud

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life. -Sigmund Freud

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. -Betty Friedan

Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought. -Erich Fromm

Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains -- except kill it. -Erich Fromm

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. -Robert Frost

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on. -Robert Frost

I'm not confused, I'm just well mixed. -Robert Frost

Another pill I'm to consume to make me learn to feel again. Is followed by another one to make me lose the same. -Fuel

Shades of sun in my head, blistered skin turning red. I can’t complain. It’s something to do, cloud my mind and erase you –Fuel

Swallowed the pill. Drank to the fill. All these things I carry now, in this bittersweet, in this bittersweet now. Try to hold the world there sinking, swimming in a paper cup. Try to own the one beneath the skin. Held up to the flame ’till singeing, skin begins to draw and tuck. Never told there’s a chance to win. –Fuel

Troubled days cloud my eyes, stole the sun from my skies. And in this darkness I am tossing, turning, lying wide awake. Hold my breath; wish that I could find a place to hideaway. –Fuel

And I sat when I should have stood. And I swallowed when I should have spit. But I only recognize me in pictures taken long ago and all the changes simply haunt and never go away. A friend will tell me when I hit hell - I may not feel the change. Held my eyes closed for too long. Just before I go, don't you offer any sweet advice 'cause where were all your shoulders when I needed them so long ago? And now with legs weak and weary from this silly dance, with a suitcase full of memories, I pack my bags and slowly drift away. -Fuel

And so we danced alone but pain is always so betrayed with our eyes. But I know now, on hearts the faithless can't rely. Do dreams make no sound as they die? Remember the nights by the riverside? No secrets from our sins and the world would not subside, and the worst thing is knowing that I'll survive. -Fuel

Every thought felt as true or allowed to be accepted as true by your conscious mind takes root in your subconscious, blossoms sooner or later into act and bears its own fruit. -Funkadelic

So I'm dancing to a new beat and it came to me in bed. My veins became a strain of light that I let to flow instead. And a wish came to me like Peter Pan at my window and said evolve your destiny child and you'll never walk alone, no you'll never walk alone. But travel to the land of surrender ‘til you can't cry no more ’til you can't, till you can't, and you'll never walk alone. -Nelly Furtado

I feel like falling asleep and never waking up. It's not that my glass is empty but I need another cup. When all of the doors around me just shut one by one, I feel like falling asleep but the party's just begun. -Nelly Furtado

G

I go mental. I'll try to be gentle. When I grow up I'll be stable. When I grow up I'll turn the tables. -Garbage

She's not the kind of girl who likes to tell the world about the way she feels about herself. She takes a little time in making up her mind. She doesn't want to fight against the tide -Garbage

I tried hard to mend my wicked ways. The damage's done, there's nothing left to save -Garbage

Now there's something you should know about, I'm chronically depressed. I internalize my hatred and sacrifice myself. -Garbage

I know how to hurt. I know how to heal. I know what to show and what to conceal. I know when to talk and I know when to touch. No one ever died from wanting too much.-Garbage

I must confess it can feel good to feel pain, like breaking waves or getting caught in the rain -Garbage

I lie around in bed all day just staring at the walls. Hanging 'round bars at night wishing I had never been born and give myself to anyone who wants to take me home. -Garbage

Such is the stuff of waking nightmares, incipient madness, the sort of now-bewildered but soon-to-be-deranged thoughts that cause once well-balanced people to peek under their beds at night, suspect that their phones are tapped, and, in time, become certain that sinister forces are monitoring their every move. -Joseph Garber

The headshrinkers call it paranoia, and when it gets bad they put you away. Because, after all, people who think everyone in the world wants to kill them can be dangerous. -Joseph Garber

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is a world of difference. -Greta Garbo

Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening. -Greta Garbo

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. -John Gardner

Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the nonpharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. -John William Gardner

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. -Janeane Garofalo

I don't consider cynical to be negative. Many people accuse me of that, but I'm not. I don't understand why just because you have a strong opinion or you're pragmatic, you're considered edgy or negative or mean-spirited. -Janeane Garofalo

I went home, locked the door and I said nothing. I’m so angry, can’t you see all my scars? -Marci Geller

Tell my secrets to the wind. Wonder if they'll say I've sinned? But if I never say a word, I'll erase the scene that's inside of me. And if I keep it all to myself, I'll let it be. Hide the signs that someone was here, see his face inside my fear. But I'll laugh as loud as I can, and he'll think that maybe he dreamt it too, and I'll stare right into that face, that place that cuts right through. -Marci Geller

I’ll close my eyes and maybe, all of the screams will leave me alone. Here with myself to deal with, and nobody even mention my name. But someday the screams will silence. Still in the game. -Marci Geller

See her look away as she tries to hide the pain of the memories she keeps in her purse. Don’t you ever notice she calls out through her acts of desperateness? She hides the mess. Oh, but she is strong, oh she carries on. -Marci Geller

Well hurray for me. I didn't do that thing that I always do, swallow all this pain with that excuse. And I know, that there is good in all these fragile choices so I stand up when the world falls down on me. I stand up when the world falls down on me. I feel all this nothing. I feel all this numb. I try to steal some faith from this thing that I've become. -Marci Geller

Will you heal my world? Will you make me everything that I want to be? Will you heal my world? Never thought it’d come down to me versus the pill. -Marci Geller

OK, I had another bad day, but I’ll forgive me this time – again. You see it doesn’t even have to make sense anymore. I’ll just keep scraping myself off the floor. OK, I’ll give it one more try, and if it doesn’t go exactly as planned, I hope I never ever turn my back on all those dreams, ‘cause they’re the only thing real it seems. -Marci Geller

It's time to face my feelings. It's time to face my fears. To walk on through the fire and take time for the tears. I know that peace will be there, right on the other side and pain will wash from my heart with the tears I cry. -Geri

In the darkest part of me is the deep place I fall. My disease lives in there. I hear the addicts call. So lost in thoughts and a quest for some relief, wanting to run from the pain to the peace. But I'll sit with these sorrows and I'll feel the feelings near. Then I'll learn I won't perish and find my courage here. -Geri

Seems like your life keeps getting harder and harder. Everywhere you turn you find the same. Come to confess you can’t hold out any longer. The world on your shoulder’s too much strain. -Ruth Gerson

Yesterday you saw the other side. I was ten miles high, waking up with dandelions and a quiet head. You said give up your soul searching for some contentment. Yesterday flew by like Nike. She never gets tired. Catching hold of her, it would be like catching hold of fire. -Ruth Gerson

Some things are better left unspoken, some things are better left undone. Maybe better to be broken, maybe richer to have none. Like the wind hitting fire, like lightning on water, when the reach of desire holds out her hand for you. -Ruth Gerson

Like a widow lives, day by day, she finds she can’t ignore the empty space. She’s counting sheep, she never sleeps -Ruth Gerson

Don’t say I’m going crazy. See I just forget my place. It’s not the fool you make me. It’s just a cruel mistake. You called it right... far from the explanation of my infirmity. I’m weak with connotation. You reek of certainty. You called it right. -Ruth Gerson

I stand aside and I take the lies to my face and down to my bone and quietly scrape at the edges of grace till I slip off the shape of her stone. I wanna know the other road; I want to break off a piece of my own fate. I’m not alone; I’ve seen the souls that sit asleep too long too wake. -Ruth Gerson

I'll never be satisfied, become a recluse, enjoy the abuse. It's better to just get high. -Amanda Ghost

I heard you say today you've thrown your life away, but dreams of happiness aren't wasted. You tried to reach the moon. You grew up too soon, denied the freedom that you tasted. -Amanda Ghost

I never cry for sadness. I cut off from the pain. I won't forget your madness. -Amanda Ghost

Strange, the desire for certain pleasures is a part of my pain. -Kahlil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. -Kahlil Gibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. -Kahlil Gibran

Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights. -Kahlil Gibran

Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. -Kahlil Gibran

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars. -Kahlil Gibran

Habits of thought persist through the centuries and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine. -Charlotte Perkins Gilman

If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down. -Gin Blossoms

All change is not growth; all movement is not forward. -Ellen Glasgow

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. -Jan Glidewell

Can't you see what this pain, has fuckin' done to me? I'm alive, and still kickin'! What you see, I can't see. -Godsmack

When you get so high that you're wanting to die but everything around you is turning green. When you get so low and I know you've been feeling like a dried out leaf in a summer breeze. -Godsmack

Can you feel it? I gotta live it with every day. I cant take the pressure, I'm goin' insane. Now go away! -Godsmack

You've made me out to be responsible for your self-inflicted misery and never felt like this before. Don't be surprised to see that I have nothing left for you to bleed when you come crawling back for more. -Godsmack

I am your peace of mind, confusing all your time. I'm running through your veins. I am your pain. I thought by now you'd know I'll never let you go. -Godsmack

Runnin' in circles, confusion is calling my name. Hidin' inside of this poisoning madness again. I'm tired, I'm broken, I'm walking along with the dead. Will I ever feel like I once did? -Godsmack

Low? I'm on empty. Try to erase all the bad times. Free? I don't seem to be. My soul remains tied to your life. Every breath you breathe deep, I feel you circulating through me. I'll never forgive myself again. I'm so sick and tired of making the same mistakes. -Godsmack

Fell in a river of illusion and apathy. Drowning in a self-induced confusion -Godsmack

And now I look through my minds eye and see where my past needs to rest. Its always disturbed by these voices that echo inside of my head. Another way that I can hide, another reason to crawl inside and get away from everything and everywhere and everyone. -Godsmack

Can’t find the answers. I’ve been crawling on my knees looking for anything to keep me from drowning. Promises have been turned to lies. Can’t even be honest inside. Now I’m running backward watching my life wave me goodbye. -Godsmack

Tragic visions. You slowly stole my life. You tore away everything, cheating me out of my time. -Godsmack

We don't have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institute of the universe. -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I eat only sleep and everyone thinks I'm dumb but I'm smart because I've figured it all out. I am slimmer and I am burning my skin off little by little until I reach bone and self. Until I get to where I am essential, until I get to where I am. -Golden Palominos

That, of course, is the devil's bargain of addiction: a short-term good feeling in exchange for the steady meltdown of one's life. -Daniel Goldman

You can't fight the tears that ain't coming, or the moment of truth in your lies. When everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you're alive. -Goo Goo Dolls

Do you like the way you feel? Nothing hurts when no one's real. -Goo Goo Dolls

They painted up your secrets with the lies they told to you. And the least they ever gave you was the most you ever knew. And I wonder where these dreams go when the world gets in your way. What's the point in all this screaming? No one's listening anyway. -Goo Goo Dolls

Misery is a communicable disease. -Martha Graham

I see her as a little girl, hiding in her room. She takes another bath and sprays her mama's perfume to try to wipe away the scent he left behind, but it haunts her mind. You see, she's just his little rag, nothing more than just a waif, and he's mopping up his need. She is tired and afraid. Maybe she'll find a way through these awful years to disappear. -Amy Grant

When all goodbyes are said and done and nighttime finds you home, are you all right to spend a night of being all alone? Or do you hide between the lines of conversations past? A role of words. A heart, unheard, that stands behind a mask. I'm raining on the inside; my heart wells up with tears that start to pour. -Amy Grant

Medication is slow and it's when it kicks in that my mind chooses to go, my feel better begins. Just when I get attached it ends. It's insane so I remain a psycho. -Macy Gray

All hail the higher, I'm higher every day and there is a will. There is a skill, a powder, a pill to make me stay that way. Happiness for a day or 2, that's my limit. I'm a junkie, how 'bout you? -Macy Gray

No man ever won a gamble with his own conscience. Even should he think he has beaten his conscience into submission, his misdeeds still leave their mark upon him. Anyone who gambles against this fact has already lost his gamble. -Sidney Greenberg

I still don’t know why I didn’t manage to keep a better footing on the slippery path called life, why some people go through it straight down the main road while others wander endlessly around dim alleyways. -Einar Mar Gudmundsson

H

Enough already with the feeling. I'm so sick of it. We don't walk around showing all of our feelings all of the time. If we did, we'd be put in a mental hospital. -Margie Haber

The longest journey of any person is the journey inward. -Dag Hammarskjold

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. -Dag Hammarskjold

When you touch a body, you touch the whole person, the intellect, the spirit, and the emotions. -Jane Harrington

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size? -Sydney J. Harris

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?' -Sydney J. Harris

Ask me a question then I will mess up. I'll tell a lie and I'll never fess up. I’m pretty lost but I don't wanna be found. No no no no no. My tiny screams don't make a sound. -Juliana Hatfield

Yearning for a drug that doesn't exist, using your mouth like a fist. That smile can't even show on your face. You gotta get out of this place. -Juliana Hatfield

She's living life like a dream, with a false sense of self-esteem. I wish she'd trade places with me. -Juliana Hatfield

My body is a shell, A broke and empty shell. A chemical well. A little private hell. -Juliana Hatfield

But I am a liar, that's the truth, go home and think it through. That's the harm in mystery, all you know is what you see. -Juliana Hatfield

And on and on it goes. Nobody knows my heart's on fire, but my blood is frozen. Take a look and see how alone and free anyone can be. Just never let 'em see you sweat. Little pieces, all they get. So why do you still feel like this? It's a mystery how I seem to be something less than myself. -Juliana Hatfield

I screwed it up again. I made another friend, a desperado, named trouble. He showed his gun to me, he took my money. I think I understand what makes a boy become a bad man. -Juliana Hatfield

I count the days. How long will it take? You're selling tickets to the self- destruction. You want the world to see your pain. I didn't come this far to go back again. Bad goodbye - you take the easy way out. You wanted so bad to be bad. It's an easy way out. Your daily bath can't keep your conscience clean. You're unequal to the task and you've got the nerve to be weak. -Juliana Hatfield

Help me with my diet. The other brats they won't be quiet. Can someone give me something to make me beautiful and thin? A plastic surgeon maybe could suck the fat right out of me and if I die or if it hurts I can sue somebody for all he's worth. Who is looking out for me when I close my eyes and leap? It's my life to lead but it's not my responsibility. -Juliana Hatfield

Each revelation, knowledge earned through blood and sweat. My scars are worn with pride. I count on no one but myself. -The Haunted

If I shed my blood in vain, could I rest forever? Should I lay my soul to waste? No one lives forever. A candle it flickers before my eyes. I feel so at ease as I start to realize. No more frustration as the thought frees my mind. I blow out the candle, one last goodbye. -The Haunted

Do you know how it feels, staring down the barrel of a gun? Everyday more or less the same, just a wait `til your days are done. Work your fingers to the bone, grind your body underneath the stone. Stains of red flash across your back, seize the power to return the attack. I've seen through all the lies. I'm evil undisguised. If you wonder what drove me insane, take a look at my scars. They go deeper than the skin, -The Haunted

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

For every habit we have, for every experience we go through over and over, for every pattern we repeat, there is a need within us for it. -Louise Hay

When depression is stigmatized as illness and weakness, a double blind is created: If we admit to depression, we will be stigmatized by others; if we feel it but do not admit it, we stigmatize ourselves, internalizing the social judgment. The only remaining choice may be truly sick behavior: to experience no emotion at all. -Lesley Hazelton

I did a lot of things in my life to get away from what had happened to me. I drank, I smoked, I did drugs, I had sex. ... I did anything I could to get the shame out of my life. -Anne Heche

Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all. -Heinrich Heine

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. -Ernest Hemingway

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. -Ernest Hemingway

Life is hard. After all, it kills you. -Katharine Hepburn

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. -Judith Herman

Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone. -Hermann Hesse

Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too. -D. J. Hicks

He will never see the way he treats me is a crime. Somebody oughta lock him up but I'm the one who'd done the time. -Faith Hill

It started out good, they usually do. Then one day it's taken for granted 'Til words become weapons and love turns to pain. Oh, why is she still holding on? She says living without him is too hard to face and I try to imagine myself in her place. But with well-chosen words and well placed tears she forgives him in two seconds flat. Oh, I'd like to think that I would be stronger than that. Where's her head? Where's her nerve? Does part of her think this is all she deserves? -Faith Hill

She said, ‘All my life I've been pleasin' everyone but me, waking up in someone else's dream’. –Faith Hill

Hard times are fallin' on you. Even when you smile I see the hurt come through and I know it feels like it's never gonna end. You say nothin's been right for a long time and every step you take is an uphill climb. I see you're reachin' out so let me tell you friend that better days are comin' around. I know you feel like the whole world's gone and let you down but better days they're comin' for you. -Faith Hill

This is your life, and welcome to it. It's just workin' and drinkin' and dreams. Ad on TV says 'Just Do It'. Hell if I know what that means. -Faith Hill

In the stress to be the best I've done it all. I've slammed the doors, I've jammed the locks, I've laid the bricks, I've built the walls. No one could tell me back then why joy eluded me. Kept bumping into that misery locked up deep down inside of me. -Faith Hill

Never strike your wife - even with a flower. -Hindu Proverb

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. -Hippocrates

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. -Eric Hoffer

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves. -Eric Hoffer

Fear comes from uncertainty. When we are absolutely certain, whether of our worth or worthlessness, we are almost impervious to fear. Thus a feeling of utter unworthiness can be a source of courage. -Eric Hoffer

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem; we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs inordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling. -Eric Hoffer

The trouble with putting armor on is that, while it protects you from pain, it also protects you from pleasure. -Celeste Holm

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these are 'what might have been'. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Insanity is often logic of an accurate mind overtasked. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

My head was never quiet. Quiet is an in-between point, implying a balance between noise and silence, between the strange blackouts I began to have – pure silence, not sleeplike, but deathlike – and the hellish shrieking jumble of my own thoughts and the voices of the world. -Marya Hornbacher

...now maybe I was really sick. Maybe I was getting good at this, good enough to scare people. Maybe I would almost die, and balance just there, at the edge of the cliff, wavering while they gasped and clutched one another’s arms, and win acclaim for my death-defying stunts. -Marya Hornbacher

I was fifteen, sad, in search of balance, and trying very hard to become someone other than me. Not uncommon in teenagers. Teenagers, like me, desperately hitting the gas to get from zero to sixty in seconds flat will plow down anything in their path on their way out of Norman Rockwell hell, including their past. Including themselves. Teenagers do not know that both past and self will rise up like flattened cartoons on the road, unflatten themselves, and follow them everywhere they go. A shadow, or ghost. -Marya Hornbacher

Normally there is a self-protective mechanism in the psyche that will dissuade the brain from truly dangerous activity, regardless of how desirable the effects of that activity may be. For example, a woman may wish to lose weight but have an essential respect for her physical self and therefore refrain from unhealthy eating. I had no such self-protective mechanism, no such essential self-respect. When you have no sense of physical integrity – a sense that your own health is important, that your body, regardless of shape, is something that requires care and feeding and a basic respect for the biological organism that it is – a very simple, all-too-common, truly frightening thing happens. You cross over from a vague wish to be thinner into a no-holds-barred attack on your flesh. -Marya Hornbacher

People who’ve been to hell and back develop a certain sort of self-righteousness. There is a tendency to say: I have an addictive personality, I am terribly sensitive, I’m touched with fire, I have scars. There is a self-perpetuating belief that one simply cannot help it, and this is very dangerous. It becomes an identity in and of itself. It becomes its own religion, and you wait for salvation, and you wait, and wait, and wait, and do not save yourself. If you saved yourself and did not wait for salvation, you’d be self-sufficient. How dull. -Marya Hornbacher

My generation was weaned on subliminal advertising, stupid television, slasher movies, insipid grocery store literature, MTV, VCRs, fast food, infomercials, glossy ads, diet aids, plastic surgery, a pop culture wherein the hyper-cool, blank-eyes supermodel was a hero. This is the intellectual and emotional equivalent of eating nothing but candy bars – you get malnourished and tired. We grew up in a world in which the surface of the thing is infinitely more important than its substance – and where the surface of the thing had to be “perfect”, urbane, sophisticated, blasé, adult. I would suggest that if you grow up trying constantly to be and adult, a successful adult, you will be sick of being grown up by the time you’re old enough to drink. -Marya Hornbacher

All of us have theories about the world and about ourselves. We will go to great lengths to prove ourselves right because it keeps the world in our head coherent and understandable. My theory was simple: I was a screwed up person. The phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy” comes to mind. -Marya Hornbacher

I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death. -Marya Hornbacher

I did this, went about mentally seducing men just for kicks. The point was never the sex. I hadn’t ever enjoyed sex much, and wouldn’t for several years. The point was the game and the game was not simply to get someone into bed. Men are embarrassingly easy to seduce. The game was to get them to fall in love with you first, or get them to think they were in love with you, think you were the most astonishing woman they’d ever met in their entire lives, and if things went according to plan, fuck them up forever. -Marya Hornbacher

I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgment from my brain when I get my head set on something. Everything is done at all costs. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense, pretty much. -Marya Hornbacher

If I were to describe the path between point A and point B, I would have to detail a convoluted, crisscrossed, almost blind stumble through a briar patch: the doublings-back, the stumbles into different, smaller rabbit holes, the sudden plunking down and howling with rage. In the end, I would have to point out that my stumble is specific to me. Your stumble will be different. You will avoid potholes I fell headlong into and find yourself tripping into quicksand I missed. -Marya Hornbacher

An eating disorder is not usually a phase and it is not necessarily indicative of madness. It is quite maddening, granted, not only for the loved ones of the eating disordered person but also for the person herself. It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of strength. A wish to prove that you need nothing, that you have no human hungers, which turns on itself and becomes a searing need for the hunger itself. It is an attempt to find an identity, but ultimately it strips you of any sense of yourself, save the sorry identity of "sick". -Marya Hornbacher

Nothing—not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state—will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. -Marya Hornbacher

So many means of self-destruction, so little time. -Marya Hornbacher

I was used to sleeping with people because I endlessly found myself in identical situations where it was easier to just fuck them than to say no. -Marya Hornbacher

When I was growing up, I always felt there was an expectation that I would do one of two things: be great at something, or go crazy and become a total failure. -Marya Hornbacher

Getting lost in the thought that you might be imagining everything, you might be dreaming your life. You look at your hand in front of your face, surrounded by light, and your heart thrums as you think: I'm dreaming, I'm not even here, I don't exist. It is too fascinating, the thought that you AREN'T -Marya Hornbacher

Life seemed like too long a time to have to stick around, a huge span of years through which one would be required to tap-dance and smile and be Great! and be Happy! and be Amazing! and be Precocious! I was tired of my life by the time I was sixteen. I was tired of being too much, too intense, too manic. I was tired of people, and I was incredibly tired of myself. -Marya Hornbacher

The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions. -Marya Hornbacher

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. -Marya Hornbacher

So when and how will I know? How much further do I have to go? How much longer until I finally know? Because I'm looking and I just can't see what's in front of me. Show me what it's for, make me understand it. I've been crawling in the dark, looking for the answer. Is there something more than what I've been handed? I've been crawling in the dark looking for it. -Hoobastank

I've always been a thin girl. I'm not going to be fat, ever. Let's get that straight. -Whitney Houston

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. -Elbert Hubbard

I can sympathize wi