anthology of favourites

lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. my sin, my soul. lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. lo. lee. ta. she was lo, plain lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. she was lola in slacks. she was dolly at school. she was dolores on the dotted line. but in my arms she was always lolita. did she have a precursor? she did, indeed she did. in point of fact, there might have been no lolita at all had i not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. in a princedom by the sea. oh when? about as many years before lolita was born as my age was that summer. you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. look at this tangle of thorns.
-lolita, vladimir nabokov

i can't explain myself, i'm afraid, sir, because i'm not myself, you see.
- alice in wonderland, lewis carroll

what is vertigo? fear of falling? no, vertigo is something other than fear of falling. it is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
- the unbearable lightness of being, milan kundera

it seems wherever i go there is drama. people are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. you scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. everywhere i go people are making a mess of their lives. everyone has his private tragedy. it's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. the atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. scratch and scratch - until there's no skin left. however, the effect on me is exhilarating. instead of being discouraged, or depressed, i enjoy it. i am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. i want the whole world to be out of whack, i want everyone to scratch himself to death.
- tropic of cancer, henry miller

and even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.
- the perks of being a wallflower, stephen chbosky

he died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "come down!" they cried to him. "come down! come down!" silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for kafka to speak. "i can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "why?" they cried. stars spilled across the black sky. "because then you'll stop asking for me."
- the history of love, nicole krauss

it's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything
- fight club, chuck palahniuk

why did she do it? nobody dared to ask. because - what courage! who had the courage to burn herself? twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: we've all had those. and somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. what was that moment like for her? the moment she lit the match. had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? or was it just an inspiration? i had an inspiration once. i woke up one morning and i knew that today i had to swallow fifty aspirin. it was my task: my job for the day. i lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. but it's not the same as what she did. i could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. and i could have done what i did do, which was go onto the street and faint. fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer. she lit the match.
- girl, interrupted, susanna kaysen

in danger? she thought to herself. it sounded exciting. it didn't sound like a bad thing. not really.
- coraline, neil gaiman

we are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of true romance magazines — we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. i do not say lonely — at least, not all the time — but essentially, and finally, alone. this is what makes your self-respect so important, and i don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness
- the proud highway, hunter s. thompson

i hate purity. hate goodness. I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. i want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.
- nineteen eighty four, george orwell

she was like a fabric taken from its warm closet and hung out of doors where the harsh weather will gradually consume it.
- memoirs of a geisha, arthur golden

it's everybody, i mean. everything everybody does is so — i don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. but just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. and the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.
- franny and zooey, j.d. salinger