c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
In addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thinking. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining and screwing brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an organism steeped in pleasure is an organism disposed to continue, he has said that the will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. Indeed Dr. Dannyboy goes so far as to claim that ninety percent of all deaths are suicides. Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with- and attract- disease, accident and violence.
— Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
After the service was over, I whispered to one of my fellow staff members, "If I commit suicide, I'll tattoo a message on my body. People will read the message on my body, if my dead body alone is not communication enough. I will make my message clear.""Well," he shrugged, "they could always just close the lid of the coffin.
— Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Holy Hunger: A Woman's Journey from Food Addiction to Spiritual Fulfillment
Here the children have a custom. After the celebration of evil they take those vacant heads that shone once with such anguish and glee and throw them over the bridge, watching the smash, orange, as they hit below, We were standing underneath when you told it. People do that with themselves when they are finished, light scooped out. He landed here, you said, marking it with your foot.You wouldn't do it that way, empty, you wouldn't wait, you would jump with the light still in you.
— Margaret Atwood
Suicide is nothing, but an act of depriving the soul from it's very right to liberation.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
We can stick anything into the fogand make it look like a ghostbut tonightlet us not become tragedies.We are not funeral homeswith propane tanks in our windows,lookin’ like cemeteries.Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.Let go.Tonightlet’s turn our silly wrists so far backwardsthe razor blades in our pencil tipscan’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.Step into thiswith your airplane parts.Move forwardand repeat after me with your heart:“I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself.”Make love to melike you know I am betterthan the worst thing I ever did.Go slow.I’m new to this.But I have seen nearly every city from a rooftopwithout jumping.I have realizedthat the moondid not have to be full for us to love it,that we are not tragediesstranded here beneath it,that if my heartreally brokeevery time I fell from loveI’d be able to offer you confetti by now.But hearts don’t break,y’all,they bruise and get better.We were never tragedies.We were emergencies.You call 9 – 1 – 1.Tell them I’m having a fantastic time.
— Buddy Wakefield
It is unfortunate for the gods that, unlike us, they cannot commit suicide.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?
— Jeff Lindsay, Dexter By Design
Your life is not your own. Keep your hands off it.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
Yes -- or rather, it's not so much that I want to die as that I'm tired of living.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
There is a very popular opinion that choosing life is inherently superior to choosing death. This belief that life isinherently preferable to death is one of the most widespread superstitions. This bias constitutes one of the most obstinate mythologies of the human species.
— Mitchell Heisman, Suicide Note
All's well that ends well.''Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said.Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?"Aomame shook her head.'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said.Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.'Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Well-known, alas, is the case of the poor German who was very fond of three and who made each aspect of his life a thing of triads. He went home one evening and drank three cups of tea with three lumps of sugar in each cup, cut his jugular with a razor three times and scrawled with a dying hand on a picture of his wife good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
— Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
I don't know why, but there's always the part of you, the part that hides in the shadows protecting the self-destruct button, that doesn't ever want to leave the dark behind.
— Cecelia Ahern
If you have not known love, then the only reason not to die is that life will get better or god exists. If you don't believe in either, perhaps it is time for you to go.
— Amit Agarwal
You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!
— Tennessee Williams, Summer and Smoke
I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can't break this window. I can't even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone at risk. I won't let myself do that.I'm not selfish like Lily.I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I pres so heard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I'm hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.
— Courtney Summers, This is Not a Test
The stamp is something left over from an inpatient hospital program. In some other program RELEASED used to mean a client was set free. Now it means a client is dead. Nobody wanted to special-order a stamp that said DEAD. The caseworker told me this a few years ago when the suicides started back up again. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. This is how things get recycled.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
So, Anna, did you knowThat when you kill yourselfThose you say you love,They die too?
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
Since September,I sat one seat behind Anna in algebra.Passed papers to her every day.Studied for tons of tests together.Though it often seemed impossible, Eventually,We always found the unknown for X.But not this time.This equationBounces against my brain.And sneers at all attempted answers.I know I'll re-examine the variables,And reanalyze the unknowns, maybe forever. ButIt won't matter.Because, Anna-I know I'll never figure out Y.Y you didn't want to live-And Y I never noticed.
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
Somehow, I feel almost blinded myself.And I am forever left to wonderWhether telling you how truly specialYou were Might have made a difference.
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
And the only answer I know isThat no child should give up on life.Math deals in absolutes.But life is the most absolute of all.
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
I could always accept not being the prettiest or the smartestBecause I had the best of friends.A and A they called us.But, Anna, somehow, I failed you. And now I've lost the best part ofMe.
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
Life can be messy.No doubt, a lot of these kids are living proof.But in spite of their anxieties and their angers,At least- They Are trying to live.
— Terri Fields, After the Death of Anna Gonzales
suicide is not just killing yourself, but the world outside
— Mayank Sharma
I reeled with giddiness - flames passed before my eyes.I remembered those precipices that drew one towards them with irresistible power - wells that have had to be filled up because of persons throwing themselves into them - trees that have had to be cut down because of people hanging themselves upon them - the contagion of suicide and theft and murder, which at various times has taken possession of people's minds, by means well understood; that strange inducement, which makes people kill themselves because others kill themselves. My hair rose upon my head with horror!("The Invisible Eye")
— Erckmann-Chatrian, Terror by Gaslight: More Victorian Tales of Terror
Most people are so mind-bogglingly aggravating that it's impossible to overreact to them, even if that means killing yourself.
— Maija Haavisto, The Atlas Moth
Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fu** this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive.
— Rebecca O'Donnell, Freak: The True Story of an Insecurity Addict
When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home.
— Ryū Murakami, In the Miso Soup
I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond - the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one's life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act.
— Juliet Marillier, Heart's Blood
Suicide is the utmost sincere and candid apology to the ones you hurt most
— Christopher J Marshall
J_Doe032692 wrote: I am not a thin person. However this does not give people the right to taunt me, calling me ugly and worthless, telling me to kill myself because no one will ever want me, or to make up songs about why I am so fat and how much food I eat. NO ONE, I repeat, NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO HURT ANOTHER HUMAN BEING THIS BADLY.My throat constricts. The neck brace feels as if it's shrinking and cutting off my esophagus. I reach up and cover the words with my hand and the web site dissolves.I want to go. Now.
— Julie Anne Peters, By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
However, the struggle with that sentinel is, as a rule, not so hard as it may seem from a long way off, mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind. If we are in great bodily pain, or the pain lasts a long time, we become indifferent to other troubles; all we think about is to get well. In the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering. This is especially evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely morbid and exaggerated ill-humor. No special effort to overcome their feelings is necessary, nor do such people require to be worked up in order to take the step; but as soon as the keeper into whose charge they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes, they quickly bring their life to an end.When, in some dreadful and ghastly dream, we reach the moment of greatest horror, it awakes us; thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night. And life is a dream: when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off, the same thing happens.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism: The Essays
Today we have made a fetish of choice
—  but a chosen death is forbidden. Perhaps what distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans have learnt to cling more abjectly to life.
There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.
— Ilsa J. Bick
Welcome to Final Forum. Use this board to communicate with other who are completers. Please note: Participants may not attempt to dissuade or discourage self termination. Disregard for free will informed consent will result in immediate removal from the board. Future access to Through-The-Light will be denied. This board is monitored at all times."That's comforting. I've been to suicide boards before where people get on and say stuff like, "Don't do it. Suicide is not the answer."They don't know the question.Or, "Life's a bitch. Get used to it."Thanks."Suicide is the easy way out."If it's so easy, why am I still here?And my favorite: "God loves you. Life is the most precious gift from God. You will break God's heart if you throw His gift away."God has a heart? That's news to me.People on boards are very, very shallow.The Final Forum has a long list of topic, including: Random Rants, Bullied, Divorce, Disease, So Tired, Hate This Life, Bleak, Bequests, Attempts.Already I like this board. I start with Random Rants.
— Julie Anne Peters, By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
During those times, they'd stand there watching me watching them. I'd pray, please. Put a pillow to my face. Clench a hand around my throat. Stab me. Shoot me. Put me out of everyone's misery.Why did you give birth to such a loser? Why didn't you admit I was hopeless and fat and stop trying to make me fit in? This world wasn't meant for me. I was born too soon or too late. Too defective.I wish I could tell my parents, "If you want to help me, help me die."I wonder, Are they required to fill out a 24-hour suicide watch form? Is the Defect at home? Check. Is It alive? Check.Why did they bother with the constructive surgery on my throat anyway? Waste of money. They threw away or hid from me everything with sharp edges or breakables. Picture frames. Pottery. Did they think they could suicide-proof this place?I want to tell them, "Chip, Kim, there is no way to suicide-proof a person
— Julie Anne Peters, By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
Life ... is a burden. The day about to begin is an oppressive weight.... The erect penis is heavy, even heavier the hanging one. Even the most tender breast has to be dragged along.
— Jean Améry, On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death
The precious gift of life must be preserved no matter now painful and pointless it seemed. Peace, I told them, is a gift so perfect that only God should grant it. I told people, only God’s most selfish children would steal God’s greatest gift, His only gift greater than life. The gift of death.This lesson is to the murderer, I said. This is to the suicide. This is to the abortionist. This is to the suffering and sick.Only God has the right to surprise His children with death.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
I have always felt that suicide was connected to communication. Not due to a lack of opportunity, but to an impossibility to communicate and be understood. It can be frustrating to try to share something with somebody, something important and real to you, and see in the face of another person that he doesn't care or, worse still, simply doesn't understand you. Of course, it is inevitable that this will happen from time to time, but imagine if it were always that way. Imagine if every time you tried to communicate and connect with another human being you fell short. If you never make any sense to anybody, if you never connect, you hold no value: you are truly alone. There are those who can survive as genuine outsiders, and then there are those who can't.
— Alan Emmins, Mop Men: Inside the World of Crime Scene Cleaners
So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.
— D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers
Bear no malice for the ones who leave you.
— Bert V. Royal
War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.
— Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love
It was soon after that I, overwhelmed with the implications of that memory, overdosed - well, somebody did but as it was my mouth and my stomach that was involved I had to take the consequences. Somehow or other (did an alter ring him?) Bruce (from my support group) got to know, drove over and took us to the hospital.
— Carolyn Bramhall, Am I a Good Girl Yet?: Childhood Abuse Had Shattered Her. What Would It Take to Make Her Whole?
It takes will power and nerve to hold the stick that way, to keep his eyes open and watch the rocky face of the cliff, pine-bearded, rush up at them. O'Shaughnessy's mouth flattens, his face goes white. And then in that final fraction of a moment, he laughs, a little crazily - a laugh of defiance, of mocking farewell, and, somehow, of conquest.'Here we go, baby!' he shouts, teeth bared. 'Now I'm going to find out what it really feels like to fly into the side of a mountain!...'There is only the storm to hear the smash of the plane as it splinters itself against the rock - and the storm drowns the sound out with thunder, just as the lightning turns pale the flame that rises, like a hungry tongue, from the wreckage. ("Jane Browns Body")
— Cornell Woolrich, The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich
And then again, maybe it was some weird noise in my brother’s head, some little digital murmur he never told anyone about. I’ve heard about that – how you wake up one day and there’s like this permanent dial tone droning somewhere behind the meat in your head, a little Dustbuster trapped where the brain saves you from going crazy. After a while you wind up ending it all just to make things quiet again.
— Adam Rapp, Under the Wolf, Under the Dog
She felt worthless and hollow. There was no hope of fixing this.And when hope is gone, time is punishment.
— Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper
I lay on my floor crying again… shaking. Searching for inner strength and coming up empty. My eyes burned and my mouth was dry as I sucked on air that seemed to keep getting thicker and harder to breathe. I tried to leave again, but ended up leaning my forehead against the door, feeling defeated and wishing the Grim Reaper would come for me in all his silky, black glory.
— Nathan Daniels
I canalmost understandwhypeopleleapfrombridges.
— Charles Bukowski
I, myself, spent 9 years in an insane asylum and never had any suicidal tendencies, but I know that every conversation I had with a psychiatrist during the morning visit made me long to hang myself because I was aware that I could not slit his throat.
— Antonin Artaud
No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which are not murderous impulses against others redirected upon himself.
— Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo
This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.
— Oswald Spengler
I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable.I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.
— James Frey, A Million Little Pieces
The reason I don't Kill Myselfis because I know I can.
— Stanley Victor Paskavich
I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back.
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
To get through the night, I sometimes imagined the sky filled with a canopy of stars. I imagined that each star contained the soul of a girl or boy who had died too young, and the light the stars gave off was their brightness.
— Jill Bialosky, History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life
Suicide is very contagious.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Maybe you think life is not worth living, but is death worth dying for?
— Cesar Nascimento
With all these forks in the roads of our path, why do so many choose to take the knife?
— Anthony Liccione
Essay on Adam"There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell.Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four:he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him.Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam.The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth,fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth,nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between:he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between theseis only an issue of whether the demonswork from the inside out or from the outsidein: the onetheological question.
— Robert Bringhurst
Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.
— James Joyce, Ulysses
Because it was all I wanted to fucking know. It was all I wanted to know in this fucking world: where did the beautiful boys go? Where did the beautiful boys go? Where the hell did they go?
— Brendan Cowell, How It Feels
There were worse things than death.There would be a leap and a moment suspended, then a long hopeless curve to the rocks and river below. They would fall like leaves between clouds of swifts and then be washed away by the thundering rapids. Bramble clung to that thought. If their bodies washed away then there could be no identification, no danger of reprisals on her family. She hung on tighter.The roan's hindquarters bunched under her and they were in the air. It was like she had imagined: the leap, and then the moment suspended in air that seemed to last forever.Below her the swifts boiled up through the river mist, swerving and swooping, while she and the roan seemed to stay frozen above them. Bramble felt, like a rush of air, the presence of the gods surround her. The shock made her lose her balance and begin to slide sideways.She felt herself falling. With an impossible flick of both legs, the roan shrugged her back onto his shoulders. Then the long curve downward and she braced herself to see the cliffs rushing past as they fell.Time to die.Instead she felt a thumping jolt that flung her from the roan's back and tossed her among the rocks at the cliff's edge on the other side.On the other side.Her sight cleared, although the light still seemed dim. Her hearing came back a little. On the other side of the abyss a jumble of men and hounds were milling, shouting, astonished and very angry. "You can't do that!" one yelled. "It's impossible!""Well, he shagging did it!" another said. "Can't be impossible!""Head for the bridge!" Beck shouted. "We can still get him! I want that horse!
— Pamela Freeman, Blood Ties
And thus they form a perfect group; he walks back two or three paces, selects his point of sight, and begins to sketch a hurried outline. He has finished it before they move; he hears their voices, though he cannot hear their words, and wonders what they can be talking of. Presently he walks on, and joins them.'You have a corpse there, my friends?' he says. 'Yes; a corpse washed ashore an hour ago.''Drowned?' 'Yes, drowned; - a young girl, very handsome.' 'Suicides are always handsome,' he says; and then he stands for a little while idly smoking and meditating, looking at the sharp outline of the corpse and the stiff folds of the rough canvas covering.Life is such a golden holiday to him young, ambitious, clever - that it seems as though sorrow and death could have no part in his destiny. ("The Cold Embrace")
— Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Reign of Terror Volume 2: Great Victorian Horror Stories
a young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
The fact that she was still alive felt wrong, out of balance. She didn't feel special, or protected, or gods-bound. She thought the gods had acted to protect the roan, and she had just been along for the ride. It was the roan who was special, not she.I should be dead, she thought. If she was dead, then all would have been settled. The warlord's men would have been satisfied to see her body swept away, the roan would have been safe from Beck's whip, the ghost of tyhe man she had killed could have gone to his rest. There was a rounding off - a justice - in her death. But alive, no one was satisfied and no one was safe.
— Pamela Freeman, Blood Ties
I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live
— Jodi Picoult, The Pact
When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy of poppies.But when it came right down to it, the sink of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I'm just not having a very good time and I don't have any reason to think it'll get anything but worse. I'm tired. I'm hurt. I'm sad. I feel used.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
sometimes life isn’t worth the pain. i’m going for a swim. goodbye, my love.
— Jake Vander-Ark, Lighthouse Nights
She had loved him. He knew this; he had never doubted it. But she had also asked him to kill her. If you love someone that much, you did not lay that sort of burden on him for the rest of his life.
— Jodi Picoult, The Pact
I can't do this to you,' he said, drawing back. Emily put her hand on his and pulled the gun to her temple. 'Then do it for me,' she said.
— Jodi Picoult, The Pact
But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk of the edge of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do.
— Tana French, Broken Harbour
In reality of everyday occurrences I've had to submit to people in order not to lose them. It's less the submission that bothers me, I guess, than how it makes my life miserable. And what happens if I can't forgive myself for making that choice? And what if, in order to keep on living, I have to continue to accept myself? What am I supposed to do? Conclusion: It'd be best if I'm destroyed. The best thing is for me just to vanish.
— Natsuo Kirino, Real World
Sometimes you just gotta hope for the hope of having hope some day.
— Jeffery Thompson
Mama, I know you used to ride the bus. Riding the bus and it’s hot and bumpy and crowded and too noisy and more than anything in the world you want to get off and the only reason in the world you don’t get off is it’s still fifty blocks from where you’re going? Well, I can get off right now if I want to, because even if I ride fifty more years and get off then, it’s the same place when I step down to it. Whenever I feel like it, I can get off. As soon as I’ve had enough, it’s my stop. I’ve had enough.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
... I didn't know whether to feel angry at her for making me part of her suicide or just to feel angry at myself for letting her go.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
Alan! How many more times do I have to tell you? We do not say “see you soon” to customers when they leave our shop. We say “goodbye”, because they won’t be coming back, ever. When will you get that into your thick head?
— Jean Teulé, The Suicide Shop
No. You can't. And I can't do anything either, about my life, to change it, make it better, make me feel better about it. Like it better, make it work. But I can stop it. Shut it down, turn it off like the radio when there's nothing on I want to listen to. It's all I really have that belongs to me and I'm going to say what happens to it. And it's going to stop. And I'm going to stop it. So. Let's just have a good time.
— Marsha Norman, 'night, Mother
Everyone absolutely knows what a strawberry tastes like, even if you are allergic to them. Everyone absolutely knows what the toilet flushing sounds like. Everyone absolutely scratches their mosquito bites. And I know that I was absolutely ready to die. This wasn't a cry for help. I didn't want to be saved. I was ready to call it quits. Done. Terminado.
— Kimberly Russell
The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.
— Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
it was unmatched life experience that bestowed in her eyes the sultry gleam that separates women from girls. although she viewed her “life experience” like bruises on a peach, men of all ages still found ways to see past the indications of damaged goods long enough to offer her a drink. hell, it was less than an hour ago that one such man called her “gothic perfection” and cried on her shoulder. her boyfriend agreed that a crazy life can “grow a girl up quick”; it was only last november that she turned seventeen.
— Jake Vander-Ark, Lighthouse Nights
She leaves, carrying a biodegradable carrier bag that reads THE SUICIDE SHOP on one side, and on the other: HAS YOUR LIFE BEEN A FAILURE? LET’S MAKE YOUR DEATH A SUCCESS!
— Jean Teulé, The Suicide Shop
There isn’t a name for my situation. Firstly because I decided to kill myself. And then because of this idea:I don’t have to do it immediately.Whoosh, through a little door. It’s a limbo.I need never answer the phone again or pay a bill. My credit score no longer matters. Fears and compulsions don’t matter. Socks don’t matter. Because I’ll be dead. And who am I to die? A microwave chef. A writer of pamphlets. A product of our time. A failed student. A faulty man. A bad poet. An activist in two minds. A drinker of chocolate milk, and when there’s no chocolate, of strawberry and sometimes banana.
— D.B.C. Pierre
Oh no!’ replies Monsieur Tuvache indignantly. ‘We’re not murderers, you know. You have to understand that’s prohibited. We supply what is needed but people do the deed themselves. It’s their affair. We are just here to offer a service by selling quality products,’ continues the shopkeeper, leading the customer towards the checkout.
— Jean Teulé, The Suicide Shop
If my life be not my own, it were criminal for me to put it in danger, as well as to dispose of it; nor could one man deserve the appellation of hero, whom glory or friendship transports into the greatest dangers, and another merit the reproach of wretch or misereant who puts a period to his life, from the same or like motives.
— David Hume, On Suicide
Women, can't live with them, can't murder/suicide without them
— Josh Stern
Where did my friend go? Was there a place they all gathered, the lost and self destructive? Was there a room they put them in? Necks burnt with rope or holes in their skulls. Beach-water bloated. I will know this at the end of my conversation with life. I will speak and laugh until my tongue falls out and then I will know this. I will know because he will tell me when I see him. How will I enter the theatre? With a hole in my head or exploded by sea. Wrists.
— Brendan Cowell, How It Feels
(…) my money guy Richard is going without a tie now, like a politician who wants to appeal to the suffering common man (or perhaps every morning his firm takes the ties and shoelaces away from the brokers and financial planners to keep them from offing themselves)
— Jess Walter, The Financial Lives of the Poets
I dont believe in God. Can you understand that? Look around you man. Cant you see? The clamour and din of those in torment has to be the sound most pleasing to his ear. And I loathe these discussions. The argument of the village atheist whose single passion is to revile endlessly that which he denies the existence of in the first place. Your fellowship is a fellowship of pain and nothing more. And if that pain were actually collective instead of simply reiterative then the sheer weight of it would drag the world from the walls of the universe and send it crashing and burning through whatever night it might yet be capable of engendering until it was not even ash. And justice? Brotherhood? Eternal life? Good god, man. Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness. There's a church I might enter. Yours prepares one only for more life. For dreams and illusions and lies. If you could banish the fear of death from men's hearts they wouldnt live a day. Who would want this nightmare if not for fear of the next? The shadow of the axe hangs over every joy. Every road ends in death. Or worse. Every friendship. Every love. Torment, betrayal, loss, suffering, pain, age, indignity, and hideous lingering illness. All with a single conclusion. For you and for every one and every thing that you have chosen to care for. There's the true brotherhood. The true fellowship. And everyone is a member for life. You tell me that my brother is my salvation? My salvation? Well then damn him. Damn him in every shape and form and guise. Do I see myself in him? Yes, I do. And what I see sickens me. Do you understand me? Can you understand me?
— Cormac McCarthy, The Sunset Limited
Messy, isn't it?
— Richard Brautigan
I realize how depraved it was to instill false guilt in an innocent child's conscience, causing a distorted image of life, God, & self, leaving little if any feeling of personal worth.
— Mary Griffith
Put the gun to my head and paint walls with my brains.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
She was disgusted with herself...and the disgust permanently cured her of suicide. Her piddling life did not deserve dramatic remedies.
— Harry Mathews, Cigarettes
An outrageous instinct to love and be loved blinded your arms to lines of propriety––Women and Men, Christians and Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, white, black, red, brown. An outrageous instinct to love and be loved executed your brain every hour on the hour.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
He pulls the gun away from his head and sets it on the coffee table. He wonders who first called it a coffee table. He gets to his feet and walks into the hallway. He wonders who first called it a highway. He wonder who first named anything. How did someone look at a dog and decide what to call it? It’s all so random. Everything is so goddamn random.
— Ryan David Jahn, Good Neighbors
I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows.
— Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies
There once was a woman named Story Easton who couldn't decide if she should kill herself, or eat a double cheeseburger.
— Elizabeth Leiknes, The Understory
I brought the newspaper close up to my eyes to get a better view of George Pollucci's face, spotlighted like a three-quarter moon against a vague background of brick and black sky. I felt he had something important to tell me, and that whatever it was might just be written on his face.But the smudgy crags of George Pollucci's features melted away as I peered at them, and resolved themselves into a regular pattern of dark and light and medium gray dots.The inky black newspaper paragraph didn't tell why Mr Pollucci was on the ledge, or what Sgt Kilmartin did to him when he finally got him in through the window.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.
— Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
— Maya Angelou
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
— Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
Life is full of screwups. You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existance.
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.
— H.G. Wells
I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.
— Neal Shusterman, Unwind
Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
— Henry Ford
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
— Henry Ford
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
— Thomas A. Edison
I am not concerned that you have fallen -- I am concerned that you arise.
— Abraham Lincoln
I was never afraid of failure
—  for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.
— Yohji Yamamoto
A bad day for your ego is a great day for your soul.
— Jillian Michaels, Master Your Metabolism: The 3 Diet Secrets to Naturally Balancing Your Hormones for a Hot and Healthy Body!
if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want
— Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
In every way that counted, I failed him.
— Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
— C.S. Lewis
Giving up is the only sure way to fail.
— Gena Showalter
The person who failed often knows how to avoid future failures. The person who knows only success can be more oblivious to all the pitfalls.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
it's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.
— Zig Ziglar
Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.
— Roger Von Oech
The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.
— Stephen McCranie
When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.
— Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
You are a side effect," Van Houten continued, "of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
— Napoleon Hill
Life is full of screwups," he said, chucking another paper at the split-level before taking the corner. "You're supposed to fail sometimes. It's a required part of the human existence.
— Sarah Dessen, Along for the Ride
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping sone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.
— Johnny Cash
Whether or not there was room in her life for Tamani, Laurel knew that there was precious little room in Tamani's life for anything but Laurel. He lived to protect her, and he'd never failed her. Annoyed her, frustrated her, hurt her, maddened her - but never once failed her.
— Aprilynne Pike, Illusions
I will be known forever as the Puppy who chased a cutpurse and caught fish garbage instead. My descendants will pretend I'm not in their bloodline. No – no one will want to make descendants with me. [from Beka Cooper's journal of her first day as a new Dog i.e. cop]
— Tamora Pierce, Terrier
We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.
— Thomas Bernhard, Extinction
Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.
— Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
Many times what we perceive as an error or failure is actually a gift. And eventually we find that lessons learned from that discouraging experience prove to be of great worth.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
I enjoy the fun of failure. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly
— Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.
— Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night
Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.
— Zig Ziglar
I've reached the age where bruises are formed from failures within rather than accidents without.
— Nicole Krauss, Great House
Failure? I never encountered it. All I ever met were temporary setbacks.
— Dottie Walters
Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I've met people who don't want to try for fear of failing.
— J.K. Rowling
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
— Douglas Adams
Of course, when you fall out of love, it’s rarely about just one failure or one betrayal, is it? . . . How does it happen? All those things you once loved about each other are replaced by other things that remind you of something you hate until you’re always setting each other off, and what you share is a battleground. In the end, the failure turns out to be less about sex—which surprises most men—and more about loss of respect. One morning your partner looks at you across the bed and wonders at the waywardness of her own heart—how, she asks herself, can she feel such disdain for someone she once felt such love?
— Frederick Weisel, Teller
I assumed that everything would lead to complete failure, but I decided that didn't matter – that would be my life. 
— Jasper Johns
Being right keeps you in place. Being wrong forces you to explore.
— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
— Richard Branson
If the Gospels were truly the pattern of God’s activity, then defeat was only the beginning.
— Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom
Rwanda will never ever leave me. It's in the pores of my body. My soul is in those hills, my spirit is with the spirits of all those people who were slaughtered and killed that I know of, and many that I didn't know. … Fifty to sixty thousand people walking in the rain and the mud to escape being killed, and seeing a person there beside the road dying. We saw lots of them dying. And lots of those eyes still haunt me, angry eyes or innocent eyes, no laughing eyes. But the worst eyes that haunt me are the eyes of those people who were totally bewildered. They're looking at me with my blue beret and they're saying, "What in the hell happened? We were moving towards peace. You were there as the guarantor" -- their interpretation -- "of the mandate. How come I'm dying here?" Those eyes dominated and they're absolutely right. How come I failed? How come my mission failed? How come as the commander who has the total responsibility-- We learn that, it's ingrained in us, because when we take responsibility it means the responsibility of life and death, of humans that we love.
— Roméo Dallaire
Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.
— Tommy Lasorda
His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
Failure is not the end. In fact it is the beginning of a beautiful journey.
— Jade Youssef
You have to be free to fail in this world.
— J.K. Rowling
Sometimes, when we want something so badly, we fear failure more than we fear being without that thing.
— Matthew J. Kirby, Icefall
I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.
— Walt Disney Company
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
— William Faulkner
Even monkeys fall from trees.
— Chris Bradford, The Ring of Earth
Stand up for the underdog, the 'loser.' Sometimes having the strength to show loving support for unacknowledged others turns the tides of our own lives.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
When you’re still too young to shave, optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.
— Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
You want to be competent? she thought. You want to learn to be in control of what goes on around you, rather than just being pushed around? Then you’ll have to learn to deal with failure.
— Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker
Very little is needed for everything to be upset and ruined, only a slight lapse in reason.
— Epictetus
Know that tomorrow will bring clarity where before was only fog. In the final summation, it is not other's expectations that slay us, but our over compensatory reactions in regard
— C.B. Smith
If my attitude be on of fear, not faith, about the one who has disappointed me; if I say “Just what I expected,” if a fall occurs, then I know nothing of Calvary Love.
— Amy Carmichael, If
Underestimate is the sign of getting fucked up.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window. He waits for me, too.And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.
— Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution
Why is it our failures only show us more clearly the people we are failing?
— Leif Enger, So Brave, Young and Handsome
Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they do so in an interesting way. 
— Robert Rosen