"The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book's true epiphany. You know you've completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Everything's plastic, we're all going to die sooner or later, so what does it matter."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel

"I need the thing that happens when your brain shuts off and your heart turns on."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"We try, we struggle, all the time to find words to express our love. The quality, the quantity, certain that no two people have experienced it before in the history of creation. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff, perhaps Romeo and Juliet, maybe Tristan and Isolde, maybe Hero and Leander, but these are just characters, make-believe. We have known each other forever, since before conception even. We remember playing together in a playpen, crossing paths at FAO Schwarz. We remember meeting in front of the Holy Temple in the days before Christ, we remember greeting each other at the Forum, at the Parthenon, on passing ships as Christopher Columbus sailed to America. We have survived pogrom together, we have died in Dachau together, we have been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan together. There has been cancer, polio, the bubonic plague, consumption, morphine addiction. We have had children together, we have been children together, we were in the womb together. Our history is so deep and wide and long, we have known each other a million years. And we don't know how to express this kind of love, this kind of feeling. I get paralyzed sometimes. One day, we are in the shower and I want to say to him, I could be submerged in sixty feet of water right now, never drowning, never even fearing drowning, knowing I would always be safe with you here, knowing that it would be ok to die as long as you are here. I want to say this but don't."
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead. "
— Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)

"I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't."
— Susanna Kaysen

"If I could have any job in the world I'd be a professional Cinderella."
— Susanna Kaysen

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

"Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

""Think of how they must have loved when all they had was each other.""
— Ellen Hopkins

""he sucked the nectar from her heart like a famished butterfly." "
— Ellen Hopkins

"I mean who wants to trudge through life, doing everything just right? Taking no chances means wasting your dreams."
— Ellen Hopkins

"So you try to think of someone else your'e mad at, and the unavoidable answer pops into your little warped brain: everyone."
— Ellen Hopkins

"When you were little, endure your parents’ warnings, then wait for them to leave the room, pry loose protective covers and consider inserting some metal object into an electrical outlet?

Did you wonder if for once you might light up the room?

When you were big enough to cross the street on your own, did you ever wait for a signal, hear the frenzied approach of a fire truck and feel like stepping out in front of it?

Did you wonder just how far that rocket ride might take you?

When you were almost grown, did you ever sit in a bubble bath, perspiration pooling, notice a blow dryer plugged in within easy reach, and think about dropping it into the water?

Did you wonder if the expected rush might somehow fail you?

And now, do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?"
— Ellen Hopkins (Burned)

" The Screaming
flashed me back
to a time
when mom and dad
were still together
if you could call
miles apart together."
— Ellen Hopkins (Crank)

"Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment."
— Ellen Hopkins

"Smile. Nod. Say
something witty
before he finds
out what an incredible
geek you are."
— Ellen Hopkins (Crank)

"How could I share the
way my heart was breaking
when my confessor
didn’t believe"
— Ellen Hopkins (Crank)

"Have you ever once in your life reached out to touch infinity?"
— Ellen Hopkins

"Can a dream be wrong? Aren't dreams God's way of telling you things?"
— Ellen Hopkins

"Heart Breaking,
I think that if Dad, staring down the sight of a 10mm,
would only tell me he loves me,

I could easily change my mind...

...but he won't."
— Ellen Hopkins

"...imperfections create character..."
— Ellen Hopkins

"I hate this feeling. Like I'm here, but I'm not. Like someone cares. But they don't. Like I belong somewhere else, anywhere but here, and escape lies just past that snowy window, cool and crisp as the February air."
— Ellen Hopkins

"...the not-so-bookish librarian was half angel, half she-devil, so sayeth the rumor mill."
— Ellen Hopkins

"Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they might disappear forever. "
— Ellen Hopkins

"I fear being like everyone I hate, I fear failure, I fear losing control. I love balancing between chaos and control with everything I do. I always have a fear of going one way or another, getting lost in something, or losing everything to get lost in. And I fear being a completely acceptable sheep in society."
— Marilyn Manson

"Music is the strongest form of magic."
— Marilyn Manson

"When all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed."
— Marilyn Manson

"We live in a society of victimization, where people are much more comfortable being victimized than actually standing up for themselves."
— Marilyn Manson

"I walked away exhilarated by my success, because there's nothing like making a difference in someone's life, even if that difference is a lifetime of nightmares and a fortune in therapy bills."
— Marilyn Manson (The Long Hard Road Out of Hell)

"A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."
— Marilyn Manson

"A pill to make you numb
A pill to make you dumb
A pill to make you anybody else
But all the drugs in this world
Won't save her from herself"
— Marilyn Manson

"I remember growing up, saying you’re an artist it sounds pretentious but now it’s one of the only dignified things that you can call yourself. "
— Marilyn Manson

"All the drugs in the world won't save us from ourselves."
— Marilyn Manson

"My pain's not ashamed to repeat itself"
— Marilyn Manson

"There was Lennon and a happy gun
There were words on the pavement
we were looking for the lamb of god
we were looking for Mark David"
— Marilyn Manson

"If you want to find out who your real friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump aren't your friends."
— Marilyn Manson