c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
People always, always talk about confidence, it’s supposed to be such an attractive thing. I wonder why though, why is it supposed to be such an attractive thing? When confidence hides so many other things that are so much more beautiful! When you think of being confident, you think of tucking away all those other things that you consider to be nuisances; but those nuisances make up whom you are! And those nuisances are beautiful. They are beautiful and they are you and they’re always going to be there, even when you try to cover them up! So what happens when they all come out one day? Are you going to feel like less of a person? Are the people who are supposed to love you, going to see you as less of a person? I say that it’s not about going out into the world and putting on a certain face— it’s just about going out into the world. I’ve gone out into the world! And I don’t put on that face! Or any other face, as a matter of fact! I don’t want to hide the way I play with my hair to feel more secure or the way I laugh at all the wrong times. I don’t want to hide those things because those things are a part of me. And I can still go out into the world— and all alone, too! I know so, because I’ve actually done it! So more important than confidence— is serenity and acceptance. The serenity comes from having a deep acceptance of all those little things about you that add up like the trillions of molecules and atoms you are made up of! And that’s just beautiful. Being beautiful is something rooted and strong; being confident is just a matter of putting on something that isn’t even a real part of you. Falling in love with the molecules that make up your essence is so much more attractive. And maybe that’s what confidence really means— the acceptance and belief in every single atom that you are.
— C. JoyBell C.
A boy has other people do the talking for him
—  a man speaks his mind.
I walk with my head high, shoulders squared. I'm better than them. No matter the whispers and taunts they throw out. Fuck them. Fuck them all.
— Katie McGarry, Dare You To
No," said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
I am the one constant obstacle to my own momentum.
— Pete Vellucci Jr.
You know you have found your life mission when you say, “I dare you to try and take this away from me.
— Shannon L. Alder
Whomever you truly are... honor that person. No dream was ever realized by disappearing into the shadows of self-deceit and doubt.
— Jaeda DeWalt
There's nothing sexier than confidence, and nothing dumber than over-confidence. Life is all about where you draw the line between the two.
— Michael Makai, Domination & Submission: The BDSM Relationship Handbook
Being popular doesn’t always win spiritual change. Christ didn’t pour out the coins of the moneychangers and overturn their tables with any degree of manners when he cleansed the temple. His harshness drew a point—to make people realize how much better they could become.
— Shannon L. Alder
I’m still the same Chelsea Knot. Bow down, bitches.
— Hannah Harrington, Speechless
You won't ever build your confidence from a perception of lack. For it grows and evolves from realising who you are and what you already have.
— Rasheed Ogunlaru
The code of the con is to know just enough about everything so you can lie about anything.(attrib: E. Tancarville)
— Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology
Jobs also used the meetings to enforce focus. At Robert Friedland's farm, his job had been to prune the apple trees so that they would stay strong, and that became a metaphor for his pruning at Apple. Instead of encouraging each group to let product lines proliferate based on marketing considerations, or permitting a thousand ideas to bloom, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. " There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him," Cook said. " That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.
— Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
Be confident in who you are, regardless of what you don't have. The more confident you are, the more open you become to share your fears and challenges with your partner.
— E'yen A. Gardner, Husband Rules: A Guy's Playbook on How to Win in Marriage
The presence of confidence can make an unable man appear able. While its absence can make an able man appear unable.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
life is what u make it,if you want yours to be a cake just go ahead and bake it
— mthavalover
Everyone is beautiful but (unfortunately), we will usually stick to the person that reflects our confidence of beauty.
— Coco Nicole Estef
An amazing thing happens when you stop seeking approval and validation: You find it. People are naturally drawn like magnets to those who know who they are and cannot be shaken!
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
Trust what you know; have faith in where you go; if there's no wind, row; or go with the flow.
— Ed Parrish III
If you criticize what you’re doing too early you’ll never write the first li
— Max Frisch
... a surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence. Page 115
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
It is easy to smile in the face of a challenge, when we believe in ourselves that we won't back down.
— Ellen J. Barrier
When it comes to competing with the best and brightest in whatever your talents or educational skills are, you have to have the confidence within yourself that you are able to achieve.
— Ellen J. Barrier, The Price We Must Pay for Our Father's Sins
We move forward by having confidence within ourselves, with hope for a greater purpose.
— Ellen J. Barrier
The most self-damaging words in the English language are: try, might, and if. These are words of uncertainty. Will you fail? That is possible. But continue doubting your abilities and you’ll never succeed.
— Dannika Dark, Gravity
Confidence is being able to say ‘Fuck you, I’m the shit’ without opening your mouth, say it with your walk, with your smile, say it with your entire being.
— Tati-Ana Mercedes
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
— Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
Your only limitations are those that you impose upon yourself
— Gary   Hopkins
no girl can permanently bolster up a lame-duck visitor, because these day it's every girl for herself.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby Girls
When I choose to dwell in the assurance of Whose I am and who I am in Him, I have a confident heart.
— Renee Swope, A Confident Heart: How to Stop Doubting Yourself & Live in the Security of God's Promises
If you are reading this, you will get what you want. Believe in yourself and that's inspiration.
— Chandan Sharma
The whole game was about confidence, as it always was. Everything was fine—until it wasn't.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
...the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say "Fuck you, I eat the way I like splashing gravy everywhere (p. 156)
— Jack Kerouac
Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
To be strong doesn't fulfill your eagerness to win....add a piece of confidence..
— Nathaniel E. Quimada
I don’t believe that," I said, and he raised his brow beneath his shaggy hair. "I never asked you to.” (Jessica)
— Shannon A. Thompson, Minutes Before Sunset
If you think something’s too hard, it will be. If you think it’s just not possible or not possible for you, then you’ll probably be right. If you think it can’t be done then you’re not the person to do it. Because you’ll fail.
— Peggy Haymes, Strugglers, Stragglers and Seekers: daily devotions for the rest of us
Do not just believe in God and neglect the fact that He has an unprecedented belief in you.
— Johnnie Dent Jr.
I love my style of writing. Nope, it's not the most poetic stuff you've ever read but you know, it can evoke emotions and images and smells and sensations, and that is what I set out to do.
— Erin M. Truesdale
It is only when we see the worst that Man can offer, 	that we begin to see the best that Man still holds. If they are blinded by greed, then it’s time to pick up our virtual stones so we can start knocking sense into ‘em...
— Faith Brashear
Summers was simply a master explainer, able to deftly boil down the complexities of economic and financial, and to put them in terms the non-expert could understand. He was brilliant at cultivating a sense of control, even as events spun far beyond what could be managed with any certainty. He could will into being the confidence that eluded others, those less self-assured and, maybe sensibly, on humbler terms with the world.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises.
— Ron Suskind, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself to wonder what "they" are thinking. Instead, force yourself to exist in the instant, then take it- and give it- as it comes.
— Augusten Burroughs, This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.
Stupid people will mistake your confidence for arrogance.
— Habeeb Akande
It is a noble responsibility to not back down when you know that you know that you know that you are right.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
...If there's one thing I'm well versed in it's my own good qualities.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear
The worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it's dismissive. 'But I don't understand this person', so they're crazy. That's bullshit cause people are not crazy, they strong people, maybe their environment is a little sick.
— Dave Chapelle
Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I'm telling you.
— Augusten Burroughs, This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.
Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.
— Thaddeus Golas
You. You are standing in your own way. And that means whatever it is scares you. It won't forever...but take your time. Nothing good was ever rushed.
— Suzanne Palmieri, The Witch of Little Italy
In its essence, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power, so that even when His power does not serve my end, my confidence in Him remains because of who He is.
— Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
Wake-up! Think for yourself, be yourself and return to what is real.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
The third gift is Courage. May you speak and act with confidence and use courage to follow your own path.
— Charlene Costanzo, The Twelve Gifts of Birth
Confidence is sexy!
— Tracy Allen
Confidence is the attitude of success.
— Bianca Frazier
Subtlety is the mark of confidence and is thus by far the hardest thing for a writer to achieve.
— Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile
If I could explain a head in a barrel to the King, he thought, I can explain a man in a tanpit to a Bishop. But I'd sooner be more certain of the facts.
— Pat McIntosh, The Stolen Voice
Becoming limitless involves mental agility
—  the ability to quickly grasp and incorporate new ideas and concepts with confidence.
True confidence is born of experiencing your hard work and seeing your determination pay off.
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
This little man was of the order of beings who must not be opposed, unless you possessed an all-dominant force sufficient to crush him at once.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
Patriotism is merely deeply-rooted government brand loyalty.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
A worm of fear wriggled in Jaden’s stomach, and the ethereal assuredness he channeled moments before evaporated as the worm burrowed deeper. When he next spoke, his own voice of trapped hysteria broke through, the worm having reached journey’s end.
— Courtney Kirchoff, Jaden Baker
The truth is now as it was yesterday, and as it always will be, that the world is-as we are.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
My message to you all is of hope, courage, and confidence.
— Muhammad Ali Jinnah
...don't be self-conscious - other people are completely unaware of you and more concerned with how they appear ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Arrogance is thinking you are above someone else, Confidence is knowing no one is above you.
— Habeeb Akande
Don't limit yourself to the skies when there is a whole galaxy out there.
— Bianca Frazier
Carry the confidence.
— Diane Chamberlain, The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes
A crisis creates the opportunity to dip deep into the reservoirs of our very being, to rise to levels of confidence, strength, and resolve that otherwise we didn't think we possessed.
— Jon M. Huntsman Sr., Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times
You crave winning and fear losing instead of just doing. To succeed you must remove your self-imposed limitations.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Perhaps I'd been a slow developer, but I was well into my forties before I realized that you don't have to comply with a request just because it's reasonable or reasonably put. Age is the great dis-obliger. You can be yourself and say no.
— Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
I have lost my spark, I'm told, and should seek to rekindle it.  Respecting the messenger, I wonder if this is true.  I feel as if my spark endures, but having opened up to the world so bright, perhaps it no longer shines by comparison.  So, without a word, I slip back into seclusion to nurture my beautiful inner glow.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
There is nothing more attractive than confidence, once she sees her own beauty, everyone else will.
— Habeeb Akande
And when you play this song, hold your head high, motherfucker, don't ever look down, be comfortable with who you are, our flaws are what makes us perfect
— Machine Gun Kelly
Confidence is not a wilted plant that can be brought back to life with a bit of water. It is a highly flammable object. Doubt sets it aflame and destroys it irreparably.
— Michèle Halberstadt, The Pianist in the Dark
Confidence, is like a belt worn around the waist. Wear it too tight, you come off cocky and arrogant, wear it too loose, you come off timid and a walk over, but wear it fit and snug, it will uphold you in every step of the way.
— Anthony Liccione
You can turn off the sun but I'm still gonna shine.
— Jason Mraz
Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process.
— Michele Rosenthal, Before the World Intruded
He had the confidence of a man who had never been wounded.
— Victor Hugo, Ninety-Three
A true master will not deceive an able disciple. You are hampered by the limits you set and no limit can be set on skill.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Invest in yourself. Invest in self-discipline. Invest in self-satisfaction. Have complete control over your own thoughts and convictions, and never stop aiming to outdo yourself.
— Lionel Suggs
I do not wish to travel around the world. I already have the world trying to travel around me.
— Lionel Suggs
I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong.
— Samuel Butler
I know that I am not always right to the perception of some, but I am not daunted of being wrong. That's the effectiveness of confidence.
— Lionel Suggs
Confidence is providence
— Habeeb Akande
...because I went to London on my own, and because I went to solved the mystery of Who Killed Wellington? and I found my mother and I was brave and I wrote a book and that means I can do anything.
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
When you have the courage to follow your talents into the dark unknown places they lead, often God will send angels to light your way.
— Shannon L. Alder
While clothes may not make the woman, they certainly have a strong effect on her self-confidence, which, I believe, does make the woman.
— Mary Kay Ash
We need to have far less confidence in what man can do and far moreconfidence in what God can do for every believing soul. He longs to haveyou reach after Him by faith. He longs to have you expect great thingsfrom Him. He longs to give you understanding in temporal as well as inspiritual matters. He can sharpen the intellect. He can give tact andskill. Put your talents into the work, ask God for wisdom, and it will begiven you.
— Ellen G. White
Confidence is seen, not heard.
— Kelly Clarkson
Remember this: No one is looking at your imperfections
—  they're all too busy worrying about their own.
Fake confidence on the outside often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.
— Rob Lowe, Stories I Only Tell My Friends
…It's as if they actually think that what other people think of them somehow doesn't matter. I mean, I know we're all supposed to believe that, but obviously, none of us actually do. And nor should we, because it does! It does matter! And the people who genuinely believe it doesn't tend to be the very people who ought to care most what other people think of them, because what the other people are thinking is, 'No, actually, I don't think the Chinese are "up to something,"' or, 'You should use mouthwash,' or, 'Your mania for the collective socialization of agriculture will surely cause the deaths of millions,' or, 'Forty cats is too many cats.
— David        Mitchell
I think my reputation will look after itself," Holmes said. "If they hang me, Watson, I shall leave it to you to persuade your readers that the whole thing was a misunderstanding.
— Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk
Self-doubt inflicts the deepest wounds.
— Marty Rubin
Just because you're from a small town doesn't mean that you're small. Don't ever think anyone's more important than you are or has more valid experiences.
— Gwendolyn Heasley, A Long Way from You
Sometimes you just know... And then it doesn't even seem scary. Just certain and joyful. Like a deep stream, flowing steady and strong, jumping and splashing and churning as it passes around and over the land in which it is grounded. And for this knowing, and flowing, I am grateful.
— Vashti Lsc
Real confidence has a realistic view of itself. It knows what it is capable of and not capable of. Real confidence does not need to overcompensate for anything, it doesn’t have to try harder to be more than what it already is. Real confidence does not beat itself up when it makes a mistake. Real confidence is secure enough to let someone else take the credit for something, without losing its own identity. Real confidence is humble. Real confidence recognizes its weaknesses and limitations, and is secure enough to admit when it is wrong."'Living With Confidence: From Fear To Love
— Dan   Pedersen
It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.
— Isaac Asimov
It’s well to have such a comfortable assurance regarding the worth of those we love. I only wish you may not find your confidence misplaced.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
The problem with this generation is they are so quick to define who they are in the process of searching. It is their need for immediate acceptance that keeps them from exploring further.
— Shannon L. Alder
One who has lost confidence can lose nothing more.
— Pierre-Claude-Victor Boiste
Most of the time, we try to tell ourselves "I'm confident" or "I'm doing well." But then, in a moment alone at home, you feel how close you are to some kind of abyss.
— Christian Tetzlaff
Instinctively I started to panic when Dr. Martinez strapped my arm down, andthen the panic just melted away, la la la.Someone took my other hand. Fang. I felt his calluses, his bones, hisstrength.“I’m so glad you’re here,” I slurred, smiling dopily up at him. I took inhis startled, worried expression but dismissed it. “I know everything’s fineif you’re here.”I thought I saw his cheeks flush, but I wasn’t too sure of anything anymore.
— James Patterson
Confidence is a pencil best sharpened with paper.
— Kale Burton
And my dream for you..........., is that you'll catch a glimpse of what I love so much about fashion: It's boldness and creativity, the confidence that it takes to stand before a camera and let your image be captured, even though you aren't perfect, the peace to be truly okay with how others see you.
— Lauren Scruggs, Still Lolo: A Spinning Propeller, a Horrific Accident, and a Family's Journey of Hope
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Confidence is a magnet to success.
— E'yen A. Gardner
It is easy to tell confidence from pride. Confidence lifts, encourages, helps, and is full of gratitude. Pride demeans, mocks, destroys, and is bitter and resentful.
— Damon Throop
See what I mean? Your confidence is so strong it’s obnoxious.
— Stacy Kramer, From What I Remember...
Fake it till you feel it
— Gemma Burgess
A hero is defined by what he or she can do, not by what he or she cannot do.
— Damon Throop
Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions.
— Earl Gray Stevens
You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
— Olin Miller
Elusive success is not the same as failure.
— Damon Throop
Fighting to fit in. Confidence is paper thin.
— Tony Alfonso
I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.
— David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
— Albert Camus
A lot of you cared, just not enough.
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
— Seneca
The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.
— Tennessee Williams
Everything...affects everything
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
— Charles Bukowski
The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.
— Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer and other stories
Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind.
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit!
— Bill Maher
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
— Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born
If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
— Mahatma Gandhi
The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.
— David Foster Wallace
I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.
— Susanna Kaysen
Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people's reaction to my trying to commit suicide.
— Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
My room is so quiet and empty it hurts.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.
— George Sand, Mauprat
When you're young and healthy you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday you're laughing again.
— Marilyn Monroe, My Story
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. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.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.
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.
— Jeannette Walls
If wild my breast and sore my pride,I bask in dreams of suicide,If cool my heart and high my headI think 'How lucky are the dead.
— Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker
Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.
— Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted
By four o'clock, I've discounted suicide in favor of killing everyone else in the entire world instead.
— Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard
There are so many things that I want so badly to tell you but I just can't.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
What's the big fucking deal? Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out alright.
— Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
It is good to be a cynic — it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany
Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Keep passing the open windows.
— John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire
Suicide only really frightens those who are never tempted by it and never will be, for its darkness only welcomes those who are predestined to it.
— Georges Bernanos, Mouchette
And I want to tell you about everything but I can't because I couldn't stand for you to have that look on your face all the time. I just need you to look at me and think that I'm normal. I just really need that from you.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
In my view, suicide is not really a wish for life to end.'What is it then?'It is the only way a powerless person can find to make everybody else look away from his shame. The wish is not to die, but to hide.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.
— Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.
— Franz Kafka, The Trial
If my Valentine you won't be,I'll hang myself on your Christmas tree.
— Ernest Hemingway, 88 Poems
We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was a misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place, too. 
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. you know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect. Or wait a minute. It -- with the time change, I could be alive for six hours in New York but dead three hours in Paris. I could get things done, and I could also be dead.
— Woody Allen
Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.” That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I'd write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away.But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn't been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I'd push it away.But I pushed it away a lot.
— Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
You were said to have died of suffering. But you died because you searched for happiness at the risk of finding the void.
— Édouard Levé, Suicide
Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name
—  it is a tragedy
There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, everyone of them sufficient
— Marilynne Robinson
Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.
— Lynda Barry, Cruddy
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
— Jean-Luc Godard
Each time a breeze starts, I feel the air all the way through me.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
Seven little crazy kids chopping up sticks;One burnt her daddy up and then there were six.Six little crazy kids playing with a hive;One tattooed himself to death and then there were five.Five little crazy kids on a cellar door;One went all schizo and then there were four.Four little crazy kids going out to sea;One wouldn't say a word and then there were three.Three little crazy kids walking to the zoo;One jerked himself too much and then there were two.Two little crazy kids sitting in the sun;One a took a bunch of pills and then there was one.One little crazy kid left all alone;He went and slit his wrists, and then there were none.
— Michael Thomas Ford, Suicide Notes
It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one knows all, or perhaps even most, of the motivations behind the killing of the self. But psychopathology is almost always there, and its deadliness is fierce. Love, success, and friendship are not always enough to counter the pain and destructiveness of severe mental illness 
— Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
Each way to suicide is its own: intensely private, unknowable, and terrible. Suicide will have seemed to its perpetrator the last and best of bad possibilities, and any attempt by the living to chart this final terrain of life can be only a sketch, maddeningly incomplete 
— Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
I never see that prettiest thing-A cherry bough gone white with Spring-But what I think, "How gay 'twould beTo hang me from a flowering tree.
— Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep As A Well: Collected Poems
When he endures nothing but endless miseries-- What pleasure is there in living the day after day, Edging slowly back and forth toward death?Anyone who warms their heart with the glow Of flickering hope is worth nothing at all. The noble man should either live with honor or die with honor. That's all there is to be said.
— Sophocles, Sophocles II: Ajax/Women of Trachis/Electra/Philoctetes
You did not fear death. You stepped in its path, but without really desiring it: how can one desire something one doesn’t know? You didn’t deny life but affirmed your taste for the unknown, betting that if something existed on the other side, it would be better than here.
— Édouard Levé, Suicide
On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
I don't mind pointing out some of the failings of old age, because we are all headed in that direction, unless of course we take our own lives before we become a burden. I'm not advocating suicide, oh wait, I guess I am.
— Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.
— Jack London
I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind?
— Ellen Hopkins, Impulse
What if I just want to die?""Then I will be sad and disappointed that you cheated yourself out of your chance at existence. Not all of us have that opportunity, you know, to choose life.
— Megan Bostic, Never Eighteen
Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying 'Got rocks in your head?' to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren't careful.
— Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
So, what are you?""What I am is someone who doesn't want you to jump out of the window. The rest are details.
— Cassandra Clare, The Rise of the Hotel Dumort
…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.
— Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come
My best friend is dead, and I could have saved her. It’s so wrong so completely and painfully wrong, that I walked through my front door tonight smiling.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.
— John Waters
[about suicide] And why is it the biggest sin of all? All your life you're told that you'll be going to this marvellous place when you pass on. And the one thing you can do to get you there a bit quicker is something that stops you getting there at all. Oh, I can see that it's a kind of queue­jumping. But if someone jumps the queue at the Post Office, people tut. Or sometimes they say, “Excuse me, I was here first.” They don't say, “You will be consumed by hellfire for all eternity.” That would be a bit strong.
— Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
I wish I knew why she never told me any of this. Maybe she thought I wouldn't be able to handle it, that I was too sheltered or too innocent or something. If she had told me why she cut herself all the time, or that it was the pills that made her act so spaced out, or that she was even on pills, or even saw doctors, or any of it, I would have done my best to help her. I'm not saying I'm a superhero. I'm not saying I would have just swooped down and saved her. I'm just saying the only reason everything was a waste was that she made it a waste. That whole time, back when I was just a normal kid in high school, living out my normal life, I really thought everything mattered.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.
— Bertrand Russell
On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.
— Tao Lin, Taipei
I was so tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. Tired of the guilt that never released me, and the regrets that could not be changed. I didn't want this life. They're were only so many times I could hear that I should never have been born, before I wished it to be true.
— Rebecca Donovan, Out of Breath
So it's back once more, back up the slope.Why do they always ruin my ropewith their cuts?I felt so ready the other day,Had a real foretaste of eternityIn my guts.Spoonfeeding me yet another sipfrom life's cup.I don't want it, won't take any more of it.Let me throw up.Life is medium rare and good, I see,And the world full of soup and bread,But it won't pass into the blood for me,Just goes to my head.It makes me ill, though others it feeds;Do see that I must deny it!For a thousand years from now at leastI'm keeping a diet.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Best of Rilke: 72 Form-true Verse Translations with Facing Originals, Commentary and Compact Biography
Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
— Vladimir Nabokov, The Eye
A thing there was that mattered; a thing, wreathed about with chatter, defaced, obscured in her own life, let drop every day in corruption, lies, chatter. This he had preserved. Death was defiance. Death was an attempt to communicate; people feeling the impossibility of reaching the centre which, mystically, evaded them; closeness drew apart; rapture faded, one was alone. There was an embrace in death.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
During a warm winter rain ... the basins of her collarbones collected water.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.
— Albert Camus
The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides 
— Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
There’s no reason to live, but there’s no reason to die, either. The only way we can still show our contempt for life is to accept it. Life is not worth the bother of leaving it. Out of charity, one might spare a few individuals the trouble of living, but what about oneself? Despair, indifference, betrayal, fidelity, solitude, the family, freedom, weight, money, poverty, love, absence of love, syphilis, health, sleep, insomnia, desire, impotence, platitudes, art, honesty, dishonor, mediocrity, intelligence – nothing there to make a fuss about. We know only too well what those things are made of, no point in watching for them.
— Jacques Rigaut
Your life was a hypothesis. Those who die old are made of the past. Thinking of them, one thinks of what they have done. Thinking of you, one thinks of what you could have become. You were, and you will remain, made up of possibilities.
— Édouard Levé, Suicide
The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night
But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.
— Anne Sexton
When the bell rings, and lunch is over, I decide to come back here tomorrow, and the next day. I tell myself it really isn’t that bad.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
Your suicide makes the lives of those who outlive you more intense. Should they be threatened by boredom, or tshould the absurdity of their lives leap out at them from the curve of some cruel mirror, let them remember you, and the pain of existence will seem preferable to the disquietude of no longer being.
— Édouard Levé
I'm moving to Nevada. Either there or kill myself.
— Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
We who burrow in filth every day may be forgiven perhaps the one sin that ends all sins.
— Vladimir Nabokov
I'd spend about an hour, my room darkening around me, wondering what the hell happened to make me so unsure of who I even was. Because who you are is supposed to be the easiest question in the world to answer, right? Only for me it hadn't been easy for a very long time.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key.
— Haruki Murakami
You were not surprised to find yourself ill adapted to the world, but it did surprise you that the world had produced a being who now lived in it as a foreigner. Do plants commit suicide? Do animals die of helplessness? They either function or disappear. You were perhaps a weak link, an accidental evolutionary dead end, a temporary anomaly not destined to burgeon again.
— Édouard Levé, Suicide
Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are myrevolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity ofconsciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitationto death—and I refuse suicide.
— Albert Camus
Committing suicide essentially said to friends and loved ones and the world at large that you were the only thing that mattered, that your problems were hopeless that you deserved to escape from them and to hell with everyone else.Suicide was nothing more than a way to look in the eye of the people who loved you and say, "My pain is paramount and I want it to end. The pain you will feel when I am gone, and the guilt you will experience at not having been able to stop me, do not matter to me. I am willing for you to suffer for the rest of your life so that I can take the easy way out of mine.
— Christine Warren, You're So Vein
It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.
— Vincent van Gogh
Sons of suicides seldom do well.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Looking at suicide—the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind—is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths 
— Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
But if someone had slowed him down, just slightly interrupted his course, maybe he could have gotten through that one nightmarish moment; maybe he would never get that close to it again.
— Frederick Barthelme, Elroy Nights
Knowing that you want to die makes you less scared.
— Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
If you want to commit suicide why tell anyone? They'd ruin everything.
— Brian Spellman, If the mind fits, shrink it
The last time I saw you, you were wearing a white cotton shirt. You were standing upright with your wife on the lawn, in the sunlight, in front of the chateau, at my brother’s wedding. You shared in the enthusiasm of the ceremony. For my part, I felt distanced from it. I didn’t recognize my family in this mundane get-together. You didn’t seem put off by the bourgeois ceremony, or by my brother’s choice to have his love approved by third parties, even when these were distant third parties. You didn’t have the sad and absent look you normally took on at public gatherings. You smiled, watching the people, a little tipsy from the wine and the sun, chatting on the large lawn between the white stone façade and the two-hundred-year-old cedar tree. I often wondered, after your death, if that smile, the last one I saw from you, was mocking, or if instead it was the kindly smile of someone who knew that soon he would no longer partake in earthly pleasures. You didn’t regret leaving these behind, but neither were you averse to enjoying them a little longer.
— Édouard Levé, Suicide
What else is there to do in college except drink beer or slit one's wrists?
— Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction
The instant that the blade tore open his flesh, the bright disk of the sun soared up and exploded behind his eyelids.
— Yukio Mishima, Runaway Horses