"I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

via Visualize.us

"I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end."

-Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Hunter S. Thompson- "Football Season Is Over"

"No more games. No more bombs. No more walking. No more fun. No more swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No fun for anybody. 67. You are getting greedy. Act your old age. Relax. This won't hurt." (Thompson left this note for his wife, Anita, and then shot himself four days later, on 2/20/2005. [1])

Artist and friend Ralph Steadman wrote of his death: "He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhouse Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored."

"Old Rawler. Cut both nuts off and bled to death, sitting right on the can in the latrine, half a dozen people in there with him didn't know it till he fell off to the floor, dead. What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait."

-Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

"You are not particularly attracted to Elaine, who's too-hard edged in your view. You do not even think she is a particularly nice person. Yet you have this desire to prove that you can have as good a time as anyone, that you can be one of the crowd. Objectively, you know that Elaine is desirable, and you feel obligated to desire her. It seems to be your duty to go through the motions. You keep thinking that with practice you will eventually get the knack of enjoying superficial encounters, that you will stop looking for the universal solvent, stop grieving. You will learn to compound happiness out of small increments of mindless pleasure."

-Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City

"I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most melancholy propensities; for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one's very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?"

-Voltaire, Candide