#suicide

Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally. ↗

— Anne Stevenson

#half #her #i #just #knew

You know when I really realized like "wow" what a gift this is was when I sang at camp and a girl wrote me a letter and said the song that I sung kept her from committing suicide. ↗

— Charles King

#committing #gift #girl #her #i

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide. ↗

— Karl A. Menninger

#avert #believe #committed #committing #doubt

When you're in an extreme situation you tend to avoid facing it by getting caught up in little details. Like a guy who's decided to commit suicide and boards a train only to become obsessed with whether he remembered to lock the door when he left home. ↗

— Ryū Murakami

#japanese #japanese-literature #suicide #home

Killing oneself is, anyway, a misnomer. We don't kill ourselves. We are simply defeated by the long, hard struggle to stay alive. When somebody dies after a long illness, people are apt to say, with a note of approval, "He fought so hard." And they are inclined to think, about a suicide, that no fight was involved, that somebody simply gave up. This is quite wrong. ↗

— Sally Brampton

#suicide #dog

My father gave me a ruined boy to compensate for the fact that he does not love me. The boy is fragile, broken—broke himself—broke everything. I asked him why he did it. He said because the world was unlivable. He said it was unlovable, but I think he meant himself. I think he meant that loneliness is sometimes painful. I curl against him, tuck my head beneath his chin and listen to his heart. It says stay and wait. It says regret. He knows what it is to want love, a love so fierce you grow roots. I hear his heart say please. He went looking for angels and found me instead, girl of the sorrows, sad but not sorry. I waited for a sign, a star to fall. He reached for a knife and drew branches. ↗

— Brenna Yovanoff

#broken #love #suicide #love

Is this some kind of joke?" "That's for me to know and you to find out." "Maybe you think it's funny to put up signs about people who want to commit suicide." "Are you about to?" "And what if I was?" "I wouldn't tell you the gorgeous reasons I have discovered for going on living." "What would you do?" "I'd ask you to name the rock-bottom price you'd charge to go on living for just one more week. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#funny

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#ago #committed #had #i #long

It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord. ↗

— Lois McMaster Bujold

#suicide #humor

In the letter he left for the coroner he had explained his reasoning (for suicide): that life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision. ... Alex showed me a clipping from the Cambridge Evening News. 'Tragic Death of "Promising" Young Man.' ... The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Flinn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' ... The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? ↗

— Julian Barnes

#suicide #death