c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Then again, she could actually be dead, and this place was purgatory or Hell. She settled on purgatory because she always believed Hell would not offer rewards for good behavior. Limbo was probably the best answer. She was awaiting judgment, and if she passed her tests or “sessions,” she could cross over to the real afterlife. It was a strange concept for her because she was not Catholic. She was some variant of Protestant--something that did not believe in Limbo but believed in fainting and speaking in tongues. Bridget had not been to church since her grandmother died because the young woman refused to accept the idea that One-Day-a-Week Christians were better than those who failed to attend church at all. Why go to a house of worship to listen to the high and mighty talk about what people in town did with their week? In Bridget’s eyes, this concept of judgment was entirely un-Christian. Furthermore, she had lots of gay friends, and she believed they should be allowed to marry. That was a concept with which members of her congregation disagreed. Maybe this was purgatory, and she was being tested for her support of homosexuality or her lack of faith. She really had no idea.
— Emmie White, Captive
In a world where people are too languid to make something of themselves out of effort, I sell them hope. What they do with it is up to them. Invariably they drink it and then hurl it down a gutter, but that’s their choice and their freedom. I won’t judge them.
— E.A.A. Wilson, Ascension Denied
Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital.
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.
— Peter Ackroyd
Maybe he was going to hell. Except, he could’ve sworn that was where he’d been the past ten years.
— Kelly Moran, Return to Me
It seemed that hell could appear day or night, at any time, at any place, simply in response to one's thoughts or wishes. It seemed that we could summon it at our pleasure and that instantly it would appear.
— Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
...even the goddess Persephone is happy, if only for half each year.
— C.F. Joyce, Persephone in Hell
You’d best teach me how to raise hell because we’re going to need it.
— Pippa DaCosta, Beyond The Veil
I'd have been queen of all England, but Massachusetts haunted me and wouldn't let me go.
— C.F. Joyce
I was out of Hell Fire and my black market dealer was dead.
— L.A. Kennedy, Macabre: A Demon Hunter Novel
At the beginning Earth was a hell; then it became a heaven! Hell is the road leading to heaven! Chestnut tastes good after roasted! When the sand lives through hell, it becomes a beautiful glass!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Wwhat the hell? Weve all got to die sometime!
— Agatha Christie
I don’t have a lot to look forward to when I finally die. I’ll either wake up a crazed vampire, who will seek out the people I love, to eat them. Or, I get to enjoy an eternity of torture and torment in hell. Love the options. So, I did everything I could to stay alive. You’d be surprised what you will do when you know what waited for you when you died.
— L.A. Kennedy, Macabre: A Demon Hunter Novel
The beauty of this world where almost everyone was gone. If hell is other people, what is a world with almost no people in it?
— Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
The gates of hell are open night and day;Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:But to return, and view the cheerful skies,In this the task and mighty labor lies.
— Virgil, The Aeneid
So, where are you from?" Agent Carson asked Reyes. "Originally?"I whirled around to face him again, this time pinning him with a warning glare. Carson was an FBI agent, but I was all about stealth. Surely she wouldn't pick up on my silent threat.He studied my mouth, not the least bit worried about my warning glare, then said at last, "Here and t
— Darynda Jones, Seventh Grave and No Body
The road to Hell is paved with the best of conscious intentions.
— Elizabeth F. Howell, The Dissociative Mind
Hell is a library," she said, tightening her fresh knot."That really doesn't sound bad, Julia.""That's because I'm not finished. Hell is a library of books containing every word you've ever said, and videotapes of everything you've ever done.""So what. Do you have to watch them?""No, you don't have to. But would you be able to help yourself? It would be unbearable. I couldn't resist, but I would hate myself after." She gave the noose two good, hard tugs. "Plus, even if you could resist the temptation, you'd eventually get so bored that you'd do anything. And the only thing to read is stuff that you've said and the only thing to do is watch yourself.
— Ainslie Hogarth, The Lonely
When you cry out against a God who punishes people in a place like hell, you cry out against the God who has revealed Himself in the pages of Scripture. You cry out against His goodness, holiness, and justice; and all the while you minimize your own sinfulness or the sinfulness of others.
— Tim Challies
it’s hard to tell whether ornot hell’s flames are gettingcloser
— Cory Basil
Jehovah’s Witness? Don’t sweat it. I’m going to hell, already booked my ticket. Bright side? I’m pagan. Your hell is my heaven... if for no other reason than you won’t be there.
— Dennis Sharpe, Wednesday
If 90% of the people, go straight to the hell.So, where do we live now.  11.05.12
— VicDo
One man may shoot himself in the forehead with a .38 and wake up in the hospital. Another may shoot himself in the forehead with a .22 and wake up in hell...if there is such a place. I tend to believe it's here on earth, possibly in New Jersey.
— Stephen King, Skeleton Crew
Once you're already in hell, it's too late to beg for mercy.
— Devon Ashley, Nearly Mended
I had a lot of Hell that God needed to squeeze out of me, and believe me, sometimes when the Hell leaves you it screams at God on the way out. And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out. There's nothing we can say or do that can separate us from God's love.
— Brian Welch, Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story
Hell is a conspiracy, and the first requirement of a conspiracy is that it remain underground.
— Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life
He had decided that if he ever returned to his old job he would create a special level of hell, an enormous inescapable shop of attractive but useless and overpriced items that the damned would wander for eternity in the cold delusion that this was what they wanted. And then Nerys had taken him to IKEA and Clovenhoof realised the humans had once again beaten him to it.
— Heide Goody, Clovenhoof
He had always thought that hell would be hot. But here they were, right inside the mouth of it, and it was freezing.
— Alexander Gordon Smith, The Night Children
I laughed, "I don’t have a CHANCE IN HELL of ever turning COLE DRIVER GAY. He's straighter than NEIL PATRICK HARRIS.
— Giorge Leedy, Uninhibited From Lust To Love
And that - he pointed ahead - is the road to Hell. That's where we're going. I have always heard it was paved with good intentions, said Simon
— Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire
For those who believe in resurrection, death is inconsequential. It's not an ending but rather a new beginning. A second chance, a reunion. The very idea of resurrection is so seductive a concept it's easy to forget, before you can rise from the dead you have to spend a few days in hell.
— Emily Thorne
Hell is a choice because salvation is available to anyone who seeks it.
— Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle
How does a person perform nobly in Hell?" I asked her."You plant flowers," she hissed. "You feed the birds, while they're burning...
— Amberle L. Husbands, Shock Totem 7: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted
Stuck in high school for the rest of my natural life. Talk about hell.
— Cara Lynn Shultz, The Dark World
Nothing else in nature behaves so consistently and rigidly as a human being in pursuit of hell.
— Pete Townshend, Horse's Neck
We want to be women who advance. The kingdom of God is advancing, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Don't you want to advance along with it? Don't you want to help it to advance? And don't you want to advance into the deeper realms of the heart of God? Advance into more healing, more deliverance, more intimacy, more life? Fear makes us retreat. Love causes it to advance.
— Stasi Eldredge, Becoming Myself: Embracing God's Dream of You
I wonder-?" whispered April Bell, her long eyes narrowed and dark. "I wonder what they really found?""Whatever it is," breathed Barbee, "the find doesn't seem to have made them very happy. A fundamentalist might think they had stumbled into hell.""No," the girl said, "men aren't that much afraid of hell.
— Jack Williamson, Darker Than You Think
Dear God, I must be dead and in hell since you're here.
— Catherine Coulter, Lord Harry
Modesty was hardly a priority in her mind until now. Now she had been cast from Hell and again knew shame.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
Be careful with your faith !It could make you see the good side of hell on earth.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
She had seen him once, smiling a little through another friar’s sermon about Hell, saying after the other left that fear of Hell is one of many paths to it. Forget Hell and love one another. That is all He wants of you.
— Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires
That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.
— Seamus Heaney, Beowulf
Central Bankers are driving us to Hell in a vehicle We are paying the installments on
— Dean Cavanagh
This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.
— Primo Levi, If This Is a Man / The Truce
I left her wallpapering her much-loved, much-tended little corner of hell.
— Joanna Russ, On Strike Against God
It's not a question of God `sending' us to Hell. In each of us there is something growing up which will of itself be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
— C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
the Devil's hand directs our every movethe things we loathed become the things we love
— day by day we drop through stinking shadesquite undeterred on our descent to Hell.
A black dog, tall and wide as a full grown man, took a couple of steps toward them. It bared sharp, yellow fangs big as Bowie knifes. Drool dripped from them to the dried grass below. Unable to help it, Lee wet his pants when he saw the animal’s eyes. It had four glowing orbs that burned with a smoldering red light like the fires of Hell.
— Pamela K. Kinney, "Let Demon Dogs Lie," Southern Haunts: Devils in the Darkness
The frightening thing is that, to enter hell, all one has to do is nothing.
— Jared C. Wilson, The Storytelling God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Parables
There is a rule in Hell: Don’t trust anyone who takes time out of their day to help you.
— Heather Heffner, The Tribe of Ishmael
Father never went into depth about what happened if I woke up, unable to remember how I’d died, but most definitely in the hands of those not selected to have s’mores and sleepovers for all of eternity.
— Heather Heffner, The Tribe of Ishmael
We must have taken a wrong turn turning somewhere.""Where, Purgatory?" said Dozy. "We're in Hell.
— John Connolly, The Infernals
I ain’t never had me a single round in a professional, boxin’ ring. I’m whatcha call a street fighter, a knuckle brawler. Knives, beer bottles, chairs, chains, rocks, sticks, tire irons, and even teeth. Ya name it. I’ve seen ‘em all. And I tell ya what. When it comes to fightin,’ the quickest way to double your money in a fight is to fold it over. That don’t mean ya give up or quit. It means ya work with whatcha got and whatcha know.
— Todd Nelsen, Appetite & Other Stories
We fear what we don’t know, or whatever seems like a mystery to us.
— Andrea Barbosa, Massive Black Hole
In a world of fog and gray, the youth is a shining being dressed in dark violet, his golden-flecked hair smoothed back from his bronzed temples. He resembles a human, but no man I have ever seen holds himself like a king, like a gleaming statue chiseled from topaz.I swallow. I am standing before a demon, the most beautiful being I have ever seen, and I can’t run. I can only stand in the hushed glade and stare, snowflakes falling in the space between us.
— Heather Heffner, The Tribe of Ishmael
I blew a strand of black hair from my face. “A demon treating another with kindness is something I have yet to see.”“Careful,” the demon whispered. “You may have already seen the rough shape and form it takes in this world, and yet you do not recognize it.
— Heather Heffner, The Tribe of Ishmael
Clinging to the rags I had left, I gazed out upon the full breadth of the Furnace and shook at what I saw.The world had been wiped clean of all trace of humanity. Sharp sandstone peaks protruded into the gray sky like a humped backbone, spilling into vast seas of sand on either side. Boulders and driftwood, the castaways of some bygone mountain, cast the only disruption upon the land. And I realized—no sun crossed the sky; there was only constant, lingering grayness.
— Heather Heffner, The Tribe of Ishmael
I am in the Pitte, but I have gone so deep that I can see the brightness of the Starres at Noon
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Adam, on the other end of the boat, looked extremely unimpressed with Ronan’s lack of heat tolerance. “I didn’t say anything.” “Whatever, man,” Ronan replied. “I know that face. You were born in hell, you’re used to it.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
Nothing dies in Hell.
— John Patrick Kennedy, Plague of Angels
Jonathan Edwards, the dear old soul, who, if his doctrine is true, is now in heaven rubbing his holy hands with glee, as he hears the cries of the damned, preached this doctrine; and he said: 'Can the believing husband in heaven be happy with his unbelieving wife in hell? Can the believing father in heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in hell? Can the loving wife in heaven be happy with her unbelieving husband in hell?' And he replies: 'I tell you, yea. Such will be their sense of justice, that it will increase rather than diminish their bliss.' There is no wild beast in the jungles of Africa whose reputation would not be tarnished by the expression of such a doctrine.These doctrines have been taught in the name of religion, in the name of universal forgiveness, in the name of infinite love and charity.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
I’m Christian, but if God is truly a God of love, then why would he have a private torture chamber where he put people that he was supposed to love and forgive to be punished forever? If you actually read the Bible, the idea of hell like in the movies and most books was invented by a writer. Dante’s Inferno was ripped off by the Church to give people something to be afraid of, to literally scare people into being Christian.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Skin Trade
Hell is something you carry with you.
— Neil Gaiman
Hades is evolved to the highest state of simplicity.
— J.M. Ledgard, Submergence
Do you know what Hell is? ...No fire, no brimstone. Man in his infinite folly invented that to rob from his brothers their will. Hell is existing without Our Father. None of His love touches me.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Find What You Love and Let It Kill You
I often challenge the people, who can make my life hell, and I do it to break the chain of command and fear, I get their attention so badly, and I work very hard to prove I am better than everyone.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
People who have never been through any sort of shit always assume that they know how you should react to having your life destroyed. And the people who have been through shit think you're suppose to deal with it the exact same way they did. As if there's a playbook for surviving hell.
— Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility
You are mine, and Heaven itself cannot rescue you from my power.
— Matthew      Lewis, The Monk
There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.
— Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; Aesculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. For what shall I say of Ariadne, and those who, like her, have been declared to be set among the stars? And what of the emperors who die among yourselves, whom you deem worthy of deification, and in whose behalf you produce some one who swears he has seen the burning Caesar rise to heaven from the funeral pyre? And what kind of deeds are recorded of each of these reputed sons of Jupiter, it is needless to tell to those who already know. This only shall be said, that they are written for the advantage and encouragement of youthful scholars; for all reckon it an honourable thing to imitate the gods. But far be such a thought concerning the gods from every well-conditioned soul, as to believe that Jupiter himself, the governor and creator of all things, was both a parricide and the son of a parricide, and that being overcome by the love of base and shameful pleasures, he came in to Ganymede and those many women whom he had violated and that his sons did like actions. But, as we said above, wicked devils perpetrated these things. And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue; and we believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire.
— Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin Martyr, Addressed to the Emperor Antoninus Pius; Prefaced by Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin
Self-consciousness is hell.
— Marty Rubin
What makes the earth feel like Hell is our expectation that it ought to feel like Heaven.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
When you make a deal with the Devil, it can be Hell.
— Reyna Pryde, Bound by Sacrifice
It's wearying, like Caliban buttonholing you in hell and telling you the struggle he's having getting along with himself.
— Derek Raymond, The Crust on Its Uppers
With the aid of a minute correction - that of the dispersing lens - in a gold frame perched on her nose, Miranda can see into hell.
— Ingeborg Bachmann, Simultan: Erzählungen
Capitalism without Bankruptcy is like Catholicism without Hell.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may it be the shortest.
— Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
She'd created her own hell, and now that she had learned to control her fear, she knew how to create her own paradise.
— Josephine Angelini, Goddess
The Greeks were more preoccupied with, where these ousted gods resided. That is: The fallen son's of God could go where humans were, but humans could not go where they were. According to Greek mythology, Tartarus was an imposed condition for bad gods--not bad humans. (page 10)
— Michael Ben Zehabe, A Commentary on Jonah
In the airport, luggage-laden people rush hither and yon through endless corridors, like souls to each of whom the devil has furnished a different, inaccurate map of the escape route from hell.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, Changing Planes
In all seriousness, Archer claims that if you, as a living, alive person, hear the song "You're the One That I Want" from the musical Grease three times in a single day - seemingly by accident, whether in an elevator, on a radio, a telephone hold button, or whatever - it indicates that you'll surely die before sunset.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
I smile thinly, to make it clear that this will happen when hell turns into a family friendly summer resort.
— Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
Because the mankind very himself is a torturer, he created the concept of hell!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Sometimes the bridge that leads to heaven is the very hell itself!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
The road to Hell is always shiny and alluring.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
It was hell to be so tired, and still care.
— Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour
...,dying seems like the greatest weakness, and in a world where people say you're lazy for not shaving your legs, then being dead seems like the ultimate character flaw. Chapter I.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I'd heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn't see the walls through all of the paintings! They'd painted the ceilings, the 82plates, the windows, the lampshades! Was it an act of rebellion! An act of expression! Were the paintings good, or was that beside the point! I needed to see it for myself, and I needed to tell the world about it! I used to live for reporting like that! Stalin found out about the community and sent his thugs in, just a few days before I got there, to break all of their arms! That was worse than killing them! It was a horrible sight, Oskar: their arms in crude splints, straight in front of them like zombies! They couldn't feed themselves, because they couldn't get their hands to their mouths! So you know what they did!' 'They starved?' 'They fed each other! That's the difference between heaven and hell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
It is not possible to say too much about Christ. But it is quite possible to say too little about hell.
— J.C. Ryle, St. Mark
What do you think the Order is going to do?" he asks. "Help us open a door to Hell, if we're lucky," I reply. Lucky. Ha ha. The irony.
— Kendare Blake, Girl of Nightmares
Beside me the monstrumologist murmured, "I believe I am in hell, therefore I am there.
— Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood
Every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, another New Yorker has gone to hell.
— Tom Spanbauer, In the City of Shy Hunters
Somebody who is Christ's must love Christ, and when he loves Christ he is delivered from the Devil, from hell and from death.
— Elder Porphyrios
Chuck Palahniuk asked which is worse: Hell or nothing. Here is my answer: Of course nothing! Because even in Hell, there is hope!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Hell means torture
—  torture means badness. Goodness cannot create or produce badness. Hell does not belong to God
As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Spider's Thread
He was in hell. Worse than that, he was in hell, and someone had set it on repeat.
— Dennis Sharpe, Destroyer of Worlds
I thought that this must be what purgatory was like. Can't go forward. Can't go back. Awaiting some official judgment.
— Megan Miranda, Hysteria
Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
We are not built for mountains and dawns and artistic affinities; they are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff of life, and this is where we have to prove our mettle. A false Christianity takes us up on the mount and we want to stay there. But what about the devil-possessed world? Oh, let it go to hell! We are having a great time up here.
— Oswald Chambers
I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.
— Deborah Feldman, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots
I'm simpley one hell of a butler.
— Sebastian Michealis
Directly beneath the Lotus Pond of Paradise lay the lower depths of Hell, and as He peered through the crystalline waters, He could see the River of Three Crossings and the Mountain of Needles as clearly as if He were viewing pictures in a peep-box.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Spider's Thread
He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.
— Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love
Great robber though he was, Kandata could only trash about like a dying frog as he choked on the blood of the pond.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, The Spider's Thread
...You say you don't mistrust me, yet you quote Chrysostom - Hell is paved with priests' skulls....
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
...you found me in my lonely labyrinth and like Beatrice, led me out of my own hell...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
No, this is wonderful!” Mrs. Hernandez’ face turned into a wrinkle mosaic when she smiled. “It’s not what you give, but the spirit in which you give. That’s what’s important.” Rise was on the fast track to hell, if that was the standard. Her neighbor had trouble with a heavy box, so she reached to help, thinking it might slow her descent into the fiery pit of eternal damnation.
— Dawn Jayne, Uprising
Mr. Jamrach led me through the lobby and into the menagerie. The first was a parrot room, a fearsome screaming place of mad round eyes, crimson breasts that beat against bars, wings that flapped against their neighbours, blood red, royal blue, gypsy yellow, grass green. The birds were crammed along perches. Macaws hung upside down here and there, batting their white eyes, and small green parrots flittered above our heads in drifts. A hot of cockatoos looked down from on high over the shrill madness, high crested, creamy breasted. The screeching was like laughter in hell.
— Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie
People love their hells because they keep them!
— Tambré Bryant
In a marshland amongst the crocodiles, there float beautiful water lilies! Even in the Hell, one can find the good and the beauty.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Each of us bears his own Hell.
— Virgil
I didn't want to be in hell, even for a moment. I sure as hell wasn't going there just to spit in the face of the Prince of Darkness, whoever he might be!On the contrary, if I was a damned thing, then let the son of a bitch come for me! Let him tell me why I was mean to suffer. I would truly like to know.As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
— Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
You have a perfect right to consign us all to hell, rector, but you must allow us the choice of how we get 
— Angus Wilson, The Pan Book of Horror Stories
I am hell with a knife and there is nothing I can really do about it but try and keep my mouth shut and try not to let it show.
— Lynda Barry, Cruddy
It is warm within the mansions of Hel.
— Carrie Jones, Endure
War is war and Hell is hell, and if you ask me, War is a lot worse.
— Alan Alda
If there's a place for me in Hell I hope it's next to someone like you
— Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland
What is Hell like?" I blurted out before I could stop myself. Damn my curiosity. "You've never been there?" He eyed me suspiciously. Yeah, I went to Hell every summer for vacation.
— Alycia Linwood, Human
Streets teemed with hell's wretched souls. New dead with their gadgets and old dead from antiquity. Demons roamed the avenues and alleyways, tormenting hapless damned at random with branding irons, flaming pitchforks, and razor-wire whips. -From the story Remember, Remember, Hell in November, in the anthology, Lawyers in Hell.
— Larry Atchley Jr.
Hell was never God's intention. It is man's invention. It is a human-manufactured religious icon, no less idolatrous than deifying a statue.
— Carlton D. Pearson, God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu...: God Dwells with Us, in Us, Around Us, as Us
I do believe in hell as a state of being or consciousness, and I believe that people can dwell in hell and that many do, right now, today, on this earth before rather than after death. I will argue ... that hell is the most erroneous, oudated, misunderstood, and misguided dogma in all of Christianity, and the one that must be discarded if this spiritual tradition is to survive as anything more than a contemptable curiosity.
— Carlton D. Pearson, God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu...: God Dwells with Us, in Us, Around Us, as Us
Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured to Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?"!
— Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
If you do bad stuff and don't repent, you go to hell," Orc said, like he was begging for a refutation."Yeah, well, you know what? If Howard's in hell, I guess we can all have a big get-together soon enough. a
— Michael  Grant, Fear
You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time.""Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?""No..." I wedged in."That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?""No. Ceri -" I took a step forward."My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.
— Kim Harrison, A Fistful of Charms
Through the night we drove in a tangle of waking and sleeping, nightmares from hell and holy white dreams.
— Glenda Millard, A Small Free Kiss in the Dark
At the end of medicine is dope
—  at the end of life is death
I find the concept of Hell to be more honest than that of everyday life. In Hell, no one can lie to you, because you already know what to expect for the rest of eternity. Nothing more and nothing less.
— Lionel Suggs
Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity
— Sharon Kay Penman, Lionheart
It's far better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone — so far.
— Marilyn Monroe
I think it's good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.
— Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
— Audrey Hepburn
And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think?
— Christine Feehan, Dark Prince
There I was, cold, isolated and desperate for something I knew I couldn't have. A solution. A remedy. Anything. ...I hated it. Alone and confused was the last place I wanted to be. Somehow I knew I deserved this.
— Brian Krans, A Constant Suicide
If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself.
— Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra
All of a sudden I didn't fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home...and every time I turned around, another person I'd known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.
— Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped
What does an introvert do when he's left alone? He stays alone.
— Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened-good, bad, or anywhere in between-it was always, if nothing else, all your own.
— Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key
My emotions overload because there is no hand to hold, there’s no shoulder here to lean on; I’m walking all on my own.
— Christina Aguilera, Christina Aguilera: "Back to Basics"
So ... will you stay with me until it's over? Please?" "Kaylee, I would do anything for the girl who granted my dying wish.
— Rachel Vincent, If I Die
I've come home in love with loneliness
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
To be of good quality, you have to excuse yourself from the presence of shallow and callow minded individuals.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
How terrible," said Eragon, "to die alone, separate even from the one who is closest to
— Christopher Paolini, Eldest
Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.
— Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
The strongest men are the most alone.
— Henrik Ibsen
Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas
We all do have our own reasons for being alone; in my case, I just don’t like wasting my time on some assholes.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Eventually, we all end up alone.
— Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time
I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-""But-"Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. "Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?"I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled. "Because if I let go of that" - I swallow hard, once, twice - "then I have to accept that I am alone."The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain."We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma." He doesn't say it bitterly. "But you have company, if you want.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone.
— Aimee Bender, The Color Master: Stories
There are people who like to be alone without feeling lonely at all.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
I feel alone.I don't mean i feel lonely; I mean i feel alone, the same way i feel the blanket resting on my body, or the feathers of my pillow under my head, or the tight string of my sleep pants twisted up around my waist. I feel alone as if it were an actual thing, seeping throughout this whole level like mist blanketing a field, reaching into all the hidden corners of my room and finding nothing living but me. It's a cold sort of feeling, this.
— Beth Revis, A Million Suns
I'd rather love a million times and have my heart broken every time, than hold a permanitely empty heart forever.
— H.C. Paye
She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been.
— Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
It was at that moment he realized that his spirit was truly human once more. For he no longer remembered how to be alone without being lonely.
— Neal Shusterman, Everwild
You're not alone, there is more to this I know. You can make it out, you will live to tell.
— Saosin
Cause nobody's the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves - except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends. Other than these, we go out anonymous into the insect air and all we are is the dust of colour, brief engineerings of wings towards a glint of light on a blade of grass or a leaf in a summer dark.
— Ali Smith, How to Be Both
The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.
— Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
To feel alone is to be alone.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
I was always on my oddy knocky.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.
— Anna Godbersen, Splendor
Smile and the world smiles with you...Weep and you weep alone.
— Jazlyn Roehl
Though he wouldn't dare admit that he might have felt more for her. He wasn't ready to care for a person that much when he still didn't care too highly for himself. most days Landon regarded himself as a lost soul, a wanderer. Who could love such a man?
— Shawn Kirsten Maravel, The Wanderer
No,nobody but nobody can make it out her alone.
— Maya Angelou, Poems
I only had the right to sit in the shadows of the world,in complete silence. Whether I was laughed at, or told I was discusting, or thought of as unpleasant I would sit in the shadows.
— Novala Takemoto, Missin' (Novel)
They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn't common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I've ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I'm not one of them. For these moral humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother's eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio's steps as he dances? The way my father stands on edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his? The scene shifts and blues in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I've known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty, bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows. Forever.
— Jessica Khoury, Origin
the comfort of reclusion, the poetry of hibernation
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.
— Albert Camus
On those occasions when he had killed in the dark, he later needed to see his victims' faces because, in some unlit corner of his heart, he half expected to find his own face looking up at him, ice-white and dead-eyed. "Deep down," the dream-victim had said, "You know that you're already dead yourself, burnt out inside. You realize that you have far more in common with your victims after you've killed them than before.
— Dean Koontz, The Bad Place
How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?"Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.
— Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting
Sometimes she sat and let her mind go blank and her eyes go out of focus, so that she watched the slow, jerky movements of the motes that floated across her pupils. They amazed her as a child. Now she saw them as a reflection of how she moved, floating listlessly through the world, occasionally bumping into another body without acknowledgment, and then floating on, free and alone.
— Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife
Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.- M.F.K. Fisher "A Is for Dining Alone
— Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant : Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone
After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.
— Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
You’re the one thing I want the most in the world yet the one thing I cannot have. Because to have you completely would be impossible. You can’t go where I walk.
— Abbi Glines, Existence
Don't be afraid. You are never really alone. Just be yourself. You don't ever have to pretend you are someone else. If you try to do that, then you don't have anything to give the world. Accept and give your gifts with love.
— Jay Woodman
I needed to be alone for whatever would happen. I knew that something would as certainly as if this were a last chapter.
— China Miéville, Embassytown
Iskari let others define her because she thought she didn't have a choice. Because she thought she was alone and unloved.
— Kristen Ciccarelli, The Last Namsara
They say I am a brave girlI'm a hailstorm for the rainI'm a volcano for the mountainI'm a diamond for the stoneAnd I wonder if I can be real me.I see the crowdI hear the noiseI keep my patience.But inside I want to screamYes I want to scream like hell.And when she call me on phone,I wonder how she knows it.I wonder how she hears those silent words..How she sees those forbidden tears...I wonder how she knows I am missing somewhere...
— Emma Brynstein
Life is constant, in losing one or another.
— Irfa Rahat
Being alone is not synonymous with incompleteness.Having a partner is not a precondition for completeness.
— Khang Kijarro Nguyen
But every stroke of the brush, every lyric, every word whispered between human beings resulted from the pain of being alone. In our haunted heads, our imperfect bodies. Islands carved from clay and bone, our skulls like shells full of mist.
— Leah Raeder, Cam Girl
Hold this rope while I dive into my soul
—  don't even bother pulling it if I didn't come up on my own.
I keep forgetting how important it is to just be still sometimes. Without a phone, or a TV, or a friend. Alone. Quiet. Connected to nothing, and everything, all at once. Undistracted
— Scott Stabile
(showing 1-2 of 2)sort by ↑ topup up1 positiondown down↓ bottomRemove this quote from your collectionSalvador Dalí“I don't do drugs. I am drugs.” ― Salvador Dalítags: drugs 918 likes↑ topup up2 positiondown down↓ bottomRemove this quote from your collection“But it's funny how even after all these years you find yourself wondering just how well you know anyone. Hell, we've all been tight since we we're kids - been through a lot together - but we still have secrets, don't we? All of us. None of us are ever exactly, precisely what we claim to be, are we? We're one way with some people, another way with other people, maybe another way still when we're all alone. That's what it boils down to fellas. At night, when you're lying there in bed looking at the ceiling, remembering the day, thinking back through things you did and what lies ahead, when it's just you and whatever god you pray to in the dark ...that's when all the masks are peeled away and it's just you. Just you..., and whoever...or whatever you are.
— Greg F. Gifune, The Bleeding Season
Apart from such visits, for the first time in her life Eliza was truly alone. In the beginning, unfamiliar sounds, nocturnal sounds, disturbed her, but as the days passed she came to know them: soft-pawed animals under the eaves, the ticking of the warming range, floorboards shivering in the cooling nights. And there were unexpected benefits to her solitary life: alone in the cottage, Eliza discovered that the characters from her fairy tales became bolder. She found fairies playing in the spiders' webs, insects whispering incantations on the windowsills, fire sprites spitting and hissing in the range. Sometimes in the afternoons, Eliza would sit on the rocking chair listening to them. And late at night, when they were all asleep, she would spin their stories into her own tales.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Apart from such visits, for the first time in her life Eliza was truly alone. In the beginning, unfamiliar sounds, nocturnal sounds, disturbed her, but as the days passed she came to know them: soft-pawed animals under the eaves, the ticking of the warming range, floorboards shivering in the cooling nights. And their were unexpected benefits to her solitary life: alone in the cottage, Eliza discovered that the characters from her fairy tales became bolder. She found fairies playing in the spiders' webs, insects whispering incantations on the windowsills, fire sprites spitting and hissing in the range. Sometimes in the afternoons, Eliza would sit on the rocking chair listening to them. And late at night, when they were all asleep, she would spin their stories into her own tales.
— Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden
Rather be alone, than being with someone who is aloof.
— Gift Gugu Mona
I think anything like that-which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone-people always feel sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone?
— Andrew Wyeth, The Helga Pictures
There was a lot to be said for a man’s capacity to be comfortable while alone.
— John Connolly, A Game of Ghosts
Alone meant absolutely no one giving me shit, involving me in shit, or generally being a shit. Alone didn't care what you wore or how many days it'd been since you washed your hair or shaved your pits. Alone accepted you exactly how you were. It never lied to me or let you down. For all of these reasons and more, I loved alone. We'd probably wed.
— Kylie Scott, Twist
She was so alone. Dead to the world. No one to love. No one who loved her.
— Allison Brennan, Deliver Us From Evil