#angst

What's your name?" "Emma Gould," she said. "What's yours?" "Wanted." "By all the girls or just the law? ↗

— Dennis Lehane

#gangsters #humor #dating

Christmas ought to be brought up to date,” Maria said. “It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols. ↗

— John Masefield

#gangsters #guns #modernity #dating

Once upon a time, there was a naïve and innocent girl who thought she could tame the beast and live happily ever after. But the beast did not want to be tamed, for he was a beast and beasts care not for such things, and the girl died along with her dreams. From childhood's grave sprang a young woman, jaded before her years, who knew that beasts could wear the skins of men, and that evil could exist in sunlight, as well as darkness. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. ↗

— Nenia Campbell

#change #dark #depression #fairy-tales #life

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#banality #death #despair #dread #ennui

I've seen the way you've been looking at me. Don't bullshit me, Pat. I live in the addition around back, which is completely separate from the house, so there's no chance of my parents walking in on us. I hate the fact that you wore a football jersey to dinner, but you can fuck me as long as we turn the lights out first. Okay? ↗

— Matthew Quick

#life #loneliness #sex #life

if you’re going to use the word ‘dream’ in a poem, you had better be langston hughes. ↗

— Jewelle Gomez

#poetry #dreams

I wonder how you say goodbye to someone forever? ↗

— Ann M. Martin

#goodbye #goodbye

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#brothers #death #friendship #death

Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude. ↗

— J.M. Reep

#family #shyness #teenager #family

Consciously, she thought she had her feelings for him licked; subconsciously, every time she thought about him, it was as though someone stumbling around inside her head had kicked over a bucket of electric eels. ↗

— John Ramsey Miller

#family