Forward or back, it's just as far
In or out, it's a narrow door.--Henrik Ibsen, "Peer Gynt"
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish them. Words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all or why you thought it was so important that you nearly cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.--Stephen King, "The Body"
You tell the truth, you go to the guillotine
You lose your head, but your conscience is clean
Don't buy into no one else's dream
Say what you mean and say it mean
So you pack your lungs full of nicotine
And pack a coupla bottles of gasoline
Say what you mean and say it mean
Say what you mean and say it mean!--Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, "Ramrod"
Long ago, if my memory serves me, my life was a banquet where everyone's heart was generous and where all wines flowed. One evening, I pulled Beauty down on my knees. I found her embittered and I cursed her. I took arms against justice. I ran away. O, witches, poverty, hate--I have confided my treasure to you! I was able to expel from my mind all human hope. On every form of joy, in order to strangle it, I pounced stealthily like a wild animal. I called to my executioners to let me bite the ends of their guns as I died. I called to all plagues to stifle me with sand and blood. Disaster was my god. I stretched out in mud. I dried myself in criminal air. I played clever tricks on insanity. Spring brought to me an idiot's terrifying laughter.--Rimbaud, "Une Saison en Enfer"
I need a little water in my garden
I need a little sunlight on my head
I need someone to cover me with kisses
When I'm all alone and scared--David Byrne, "Lilies of the Valley"
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.--Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
I found the secret to life
I said I found the secret to life
I'm okay when everything is not okay.--Tori Amos, "Upside Down"
Mix sheer hypocrisy with mediocrity
You'll play it safe every time
So life turns up empty and you're so dissatisfied
Who are you blaming this time?--Cyndi Lauper, "You Don't Know"
I wanted more than life could ever grant me
bored by the chore of saving face.--Smashing Pumpkins, "Today"
"I love you...so much it busts my heart!"--one character to another in the film, Sheena
"You think you have what women need? Well, you're wrong! 'Cos this beef curtain stands alone!"--T-Bone the stripper in John Waters' Pecker
SID: Miss, do you know how to catch a rabbit?
MISS JONES: No, Sid.
SID: Well, it's funny. Cos you come up at him from the front--head on. See, rabbits can't look straight ahead. So you come up at him from his blind spot, which is head on.
MISS JONES: And do you think we could catch a rabbit?--a great B-movie, Fortress
"Home? What home? In a couple more hours, it ain't gonna be home anymore. Our parents want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they've gotta do what's right for them. Because it's their time up there. Down here, it's our time...It's our time down here. That's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket!"--Mikey (Sean Astin) in The Goonies
I can speak so softly because I have so much power.--Ruby, "Heidi"
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure in the windowpane.--Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Then it's Tommy this, 'an Tommy that,
An' Tommy, 'ow's your soul?
But it's 'Thin red line of 'eroes,'
When the drums begin to roll----Kipling, "Tommy" (used by James Jones to introduce his novel, The Thin Red Line
Ain't got no purpose, ain't got no direction, I ain't got no morals
Ain't got no politics, ain't got no particular point of view
What I've got is plenty of time on my hands, Ol' Skinny's playground
Hey Lord, tell me again, what you want me to do?--John Mellencamp, "Fruit Trader"
Children...That's all we are, Lord, if you're out there at all. We're children...your children...boys and girls...forgive us.--Ainsley Dupree in Tim Blake Nelson's Eye of God
Live the life you love
Use the God you trust
And don't take it all too seriously.--Love and Rockets, "Private Future"