Self Harm and Suicide Quotes

"Lisa: ‘What’s this? Huh? What’s this?’

Daisy: ‘Let go.’

Lisa: ‘Tryin’ out your new silver?’

Daisy: ‘Get the fuck off of me.’

Lisa: ‘Less appealing for Daddy, huh?’

Daisy: ‘Look at your own arm, asshole.’

Lisa: ‘I’m sick, Daisy, we know that. But here you are in so-called recovery, playing Betty Crocker, cut up like a God damn Virginia ham.’ " 

~from the film "Girl, Interrupted"

***

"That paradox would begin to run my life: to know that what you are doing is hurting you, maybe killing you, and to be afraid of that fact–but to cling to the idea that this will save you, it will, in the end, make things okay." 

~Wasted, Marya Hornbacher

***

"Yes, there was something special about me, and I knew what it was. I was the kind of girl they found dead in a hall bedroom with an empty bottle of sleeping pills in her hand." 

~Marilyn Monroe

***

"A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind." 

~"Girl, Interrupted", Susanna Kaysen

***

"There’s something in us that is very much attracted to madness. Everyone who looks off the edge of a tall building has felt at least a faint, morbid urge to jump. And anyone who has ever put a loaded pistol up to his head… All right, my point is this: even the most well-adjusted person is holding onto his or her sanity by a greased rope. I really believe that. The rationality circuits are shoddily built into the human animal." 

~The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, Stephen King

***

"For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray [sic] days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks – accidentally – and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you’re alive." ~Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs

***

"One night she hid the pink cotton scarf from her raincoat in the pillowcase when the nurse came around to lock up her drawers and closets for the night. In the dark she had made a loop and tried to pull it tight around her throat. But always just as the air stopped coming and she felt the rushing grow louder in her ears, her hands would slacken and let go, and she would lie there panting for breath, cursing the dumb instinct in her body that fought to go on living" 

~Tongues of Stone, Sylvia Plath

***

"Help, I have done it again

I have been here many times before

Hurt myself again today

And the worst part is

There’s no-one else to blame." 

~Breathe Me, Sia

***

"I let the razor’s edge kiss the pale skin near my left elbow, and then drew it slowly - so slowly that I could feel through the blade the faintest tug of resistance and the sudden giving way of the flesh - along my arm. There was a very fine, an elegant pain, hardly a pain at all, like the swift and fleeting burn of a drop of hot candle wax. In the razor’s wake, the skin melted away, parted to show briefly the milky white subcutaneous layers before a thin, beaded line of rich crimson blood seeped through the inch-long divide. Then the blood welled up and began to distort the pure, stark edges of my delicately wrought wound.

The chaos in my head spun itself into a silk of silence. I had distilled myself to the immediacy of hand, blade, blood, flesh." 

~Skin Game: A Memoir, Caroline Kettlewell

***

"This time the skin separates and she blinks her way back into the universe, watches the valley fold open, the blood seaming up along the cut and pressing out, blue to red in the air of this world, and as usual the pain springs her into the here and now." 

~Bitch Goddess Notebook, Martha O'Connor

***

"What’s it like, Lexy? You wake up and you feel — what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of the flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head — no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says ‘Turn left at the corner’ or ‘Don’t forget to stop at the post office,’ only now it’s saying, ‘I hate myself.’ It’s saying, ‘I want to die.’" 

~The Dogs of Babel, Carolyn Parkhurst

***

"see here there are the bruises

and some were self-inflicted

and some showed up along the way

so I nod my head

I’m ready for the world to see." 

~Chameleon Boy, Blue October

***

"It’s all a joke to them. Oh he’s just sad, he’s just overweight, he’s just lazy. No, he wants to die. He wants to burn. He wants to never wake up again. Turn the ignore back on." 

~Grouphug.us

***

 "War going on inside my head

I can’t get to sleep, I’d rather be dead

Don’t try to tell me, I can’t hear your words

I’m not long for this world." 

~Blackout, S.O.A

***

" …occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt." 

~Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

***

"

biting keeps your words at bay

tending to the sores that stay

happiness is just a gash away

when i open a familiar scar

pain goes shooting like a star

comfort hasn’t failed to follow so far…

and you might say it’s self-indulgent

you might say its self-destructive

but, you see, it’s more productive

than if i were to be healthy" 

~Bad Habit, The Dresden Dolls

***

"Here’s me opening my wrists

before breakfast, Christmas day,

and here’s you asking if it hurt.

Here’s where I choose between mea culpa

and Why the hell should I tell you?"  

~Acts of Contrition, Michael Donaghy

***

"Each cut, each scar, each burn; a different wound or time. I told him what the first one was. I told him where the second one came from–I remembered them all. And for the first time in my life I felt beautiful. Finally part of the earth. I touched the soil, and he loved me back." 

~from the film "Secretary"

***

"As does the pain of being alone, and the pain of keeping it all inside, and the pain of always feeling just short of adequate. As soon as the bell rings, she grabs her purse, the remainder of her belongings, and rushes to the bathroom. Stall door locked behind her, she hastily removes the pocket-sized fingernail clippers form the inside zipper pocket of her purse. With out hesitation, she viciously begins to slice away the skin on her wrists and arms, which already are decorated with scabs and scars from her last self-injury. To Heather, it’s the only way she can gain some amount of control in her life. Tears didn’t fill her eyes, no sound of pain was emitted. In fact, the only feeling she felt was control. Infinite, absolute control." 

~Amanda Blakely

***

"‘This’ pain I can see it but I can’t feel it
It haunts me
When I cut myself I can see where the pain
is coming from and watch it heal
And I can easily care for it
‘This’ pain doesn’t have a specific place
It moves around and creeps into strange places." 

~Melanie, "A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation an the Language of Pain"

***

"To you, I need help for these injuries I put unto myself. The blade you see is covered in blood. That blade is my friend, old and true. What you don’t see is that these injuries are my help, and you can never be my blade."
~Kira

***

"Even Christ himself would cringe
at the sight of your scars."
~Alkaline Trio, Cringe

***

"Shallow skin, I can paint with pain
I mark the trails on my arms with your disdain
Everyday it’s the same - I LOVE, YOU HATE
But I guess I don’t care any more…
Fix my problems with the blade
While my eyes turn from blue to gray
God, the worst thing happened to me today
But I guess I don’t care anymore…"
~Everything Ends, Slipknot

***

"We have all made attempts to take our lives, or to tell without words, some with a knife or a razor dividing the flesh, making the invisible somehow visible… making themselves, and all they’ve been through, disappear"
~Linda Katherine, Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing

***

"It’s just I might get distracted, and I get lost kind of easily, and sometimes I have really bad days…when, you know, I just want to hide or scream or bleed or something, and…all that…"
~Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Brief Lives -2

***

"You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and no one in another, where everything is upside down and backward and sad."
~Wasted, Marya Hornbacker

***

"My god! people say. You have so much self-control! And later: My god. You’re so, so sick. When people say this, they turn their heads, you’ve won your little game. You have proven your thesis that no-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, guess-I’ll-just-eat-worms. You get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. See? you get to say. I knew you’d give up on me. I knew you’d leave."
 ~Wasted, Marya Hornbacker

***

"I may not be in control of anything else, but I am in control of my body."
~Karen Carpenter

***

"You begin to forget what it means to live. You forget things. You forget that you used to feel all right. You forget what it means to feel all right because you feel like shit all the time, and you can’t remember what it was like before."
 ~Wasted, Marya Hornbacker

***

"They’ll just cut our wrists like
Cheap coupons and say that death
Was on sale today."
~The Fight Song, Marilyn Manson

***

"It wasn’t a suicide attempt, it was an escape from everything awful. When we cut, we’re in control – we make our own pain, ans we can stop it whenever we want. Physical pain relieves mental anguish. For a brief moment, the pain of the cutting is the only thing in the cutter’s mind, and when that stops and the other comes back, it’s weaker. Drugs do that that too, and sex, but not like cutting. Nothing is like cutting."
~Crosses, Shelley Stoehr

***

"It’s too hot in the store and I want to roll up my sleeves, but the gashes on my arm are in straight lines, glaringly obvious to anyone who ‘went through that phase’ already. Clearly I did not fall down any stairs to get these scabbed over little trenches."
~One Ear to the Ground, Rosie Streetpixie

***

"The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment."
~Edge, Sylvia Plath

***

"
Blood transforms the warm bath water
and, in it, I see weakly
that this was a mistake.
The razor’s cut is not deep, nevertheless
the blood rushes out happily in the warm
water as if kin to it, the same
tender substance.
Rising
a new person
transformed with an icy
sense of error
I go to the sink and turn on cold water
which is not friendly to blood.
The cut is deeper than imagined."
 ~Passing an Aftrnoon, Joyce Carol Oates

***

"Every addiction is just a way to treat this same problem. Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it is all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple. Language is just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. People can’t deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can’t be explained and understood."
~Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk

***

"If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will."
~On Suicide, Anton Artaud

***

" You know, the day I did it, I took two razorblades to the bathtub. You know why? Because I knew that once I started to bleed, I’d get weak. And I didn’t wanna drop one blade and leave myself half done. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine hating your life so much that you’d wanna bring a backup razor?"
~from the film "Stay"

***

"Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let’s show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let’s tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,
repeat with me the punch line ‘Just like blood’
when those at the back rush forward to say
how a little love goes a long long long way."
~I Say I Say I Say, Simon Armitage

***

"Cutting myself was something beyond despair, something very extreme. It’s about trying to get to something. The physical act is a metaphor of trying to access something that is frozen. Something between who you were and since the depression who you’ve moved to and there’s this thick layer of ice and you can’t get to yourself. You’re really excavating to try and find yourself again. It’s a positive act even though people around you find it horrible, self-destructive, terrifying and think that you have literally gone crazy."
~A Head Full of Blue, Nick Johnstone

***

"
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
V."
~Virginia Woolfe's Suicide Note

***

"Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
I tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets."
~Today, Smashing Pumpkins

***

"These bandages cover more than scrapes,
cuts and bruises from regrets and mistakes."
~Bandages, Hot Hot Heat

***

"I’ll draw you a picture,
I’ll draw it with a twist,
I’ll draw it with a razor-blade,
I’ll draw it on my wrist.
And if I draw it correctly,
a red fountain will appear…
to wash away my sorrows,
to chase away my fears."
~Anonymous

***

"When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough;
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now."
~I Shall Not Care, Sara Teasdale

***

 "Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live."
~The Lacon, Charles Caleb Colton

***

"…I sense a stranger filling this silent room with anguish… a silence that rattles against the windows leaving me so cold and numb… and somehow… this feeling I do not understand is my best friend and enemy all wrapped up in one…"
~Anonymous

***

"But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build"
~Wanting to Die, Anne Sexton

***

"got a little red line
that tells you, boy
where the razor’s been."
~Never Seen Blue, Tori Amos

***

"I never talk about this and it helps the healing process to do so. Because people out there must be told about the self-loathing that follows rape and how it’s the greatest breakage in divine law to mutilate themselves, as I have done. emotionally, I mutilated myself by feeling I’m not worthy of being loved and fucked, and being able to love and fuck at the same time. I was straining toward the reconciliation the last time we talked but the last frontier was crossed when I got the illness. At that point I had to deal with so much trauma in that part of my body and psyche. I do believe repression of that nature can cause the disease."
~ The Hurt Inside (Hot Press (Ireland), February 23, 1994) (Joe Jackson) interview with Tori Amos

***

"Yes
I try
to kill myself in small amounts,
an innocuous occupation.
Actually I’m hung up on it."
~The Addict, Anne Sexton

***

"It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at."
~The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

***

"i’m back at my cliff
still throwing things off
i listen to the sounds they make
on their way down
i follow him with my eyes ’till they crash
imagine what my body would sound like
slamming against those rocks."
~Hyperballd, Bjork

***

"Would you carry a razor, in case, just in case of depression?"
~Young Americans, David Bowie

***

"I’m sick of my sister’s attraction to razor-blades – and I’m sick of shrinks who can’t do a fucking thing to help her."
~from the film "The Prince of Tides" 

***

" “The window was still open.” Mr. Lisbon said. “I don’t think we’d ever remembered to shut it. It was all clear to me. I knew I had to close it or else she’d go on jumping out of it forever” "
~The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

***

"I can’t stop thinking about
Cutting myself up.
Visual bruises can be covered with make-up.
But down to the core,
I’m all bruises.
~Bruises, Majanda Delfino

***

"Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw. Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer. Maybe self-destruction is the answer."
~Fight Club, Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk

***

 "A decade of cutting away
dead flesh, cauterizing
old scars ripped open over and over
and still it is not enough."
~Toward the Solstice, Adrienne Rich

***

"I held the blade in trembling hands
Prepared to make it but just then the phone rang
I never had the nerve to make the final cut."
~The Final Cut, Pink Floyd

***

"i hurt myself today
to see if i could feel
i hurt myself you said
to try to make him feel
so i hurt myself again
to see if he’d see me
i hurt myself again
i know he never could see me."
~Hurt, Tori Amos

***

 "these are the screams within
these these are the life streams bleeding from skin."
~Eloquence in the Screaming, Patrick Jones

***

"My shadow’s
Shedding skin and
I’ve been picking
Scabs again.
I’m down
Digging through
My old muscles
Looking for a clue."
~Forty Six and Two, Tool

***

"
Curse me sold her
The poison that runs it’s course through her
Pale white skin with strawberry gashes all over all over

Watch me fault her
You’re living like a disaster
She said kill me faster
with strawberry gashes all over

 Called her over
and asked her if she was improving
She said ‘feels fine’ it’s wonderful wonderful here

Hex me told her
I dreamt of a devil that knew her
Pale white skin with strawberry gashes all over all over

Watch me fault her
You’re living like a disaster
She said kill me faster
with strawberry gashes all over

I lay quiet
waiting for her voice to say
‘Some things you lose and some things you just give away’

Scold me failed her
If only I’d held on tighter to her
Pale white skin that twisted and withered away from me away from me."
~Strawberry Gashes, Jack off Jill

***

"I feel good about the sin
That I inflict on my own skin
I pay money to cut and burn
Pictures like lessons
That I need to learn"
~When it all Goes Wrong Again, Everclear

***

"Sometimes I even cut myself to see how much it bleeds
It’s like adrenaline, the pain is such a sudden rush for me."
~Stan, Eminem

***

"World, if the razor slips. And I kill myself, then who would piss you off everyday?"
~Tony Rodgers

***

"I drew the blade across my wrist to see how it would feel.
I looked into the future, there was nothing to reveal."
~Round and Round, Strawbs

***

"I moved the bent bottle cap; it tingled, almost pleasant. I felt a raindrop on my leg. I looked up to a cloudless sky. Then another drop, I looked down, and saw it was my arm. I was a bloody mess, red, vibrant, alive, and flowing. I ran into my house. My dad was at work, my siblings out playing with friends. It was just me. I went upstairs and washed the cuts out with the bubbly stuff Mrs. Ellard always used; I found some Band-Aids and Neosporin; I put them on too. Then I was finished, all cared for and cleaned up.
My wounds became words; they screamed out what could not be spoken. The pain on the outside reflected the pain on the inside. I felt one with myself, finally."
~Find Me, Rosie O'Donnell

 ***

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’t is nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,–’t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there ’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,"
~Hamlet, William Shakespeare

***

"Aah… don’t even think about gettin’ inside
Voices in me head… ooh, voices
I got scratches, all over my arms
One for each day, since I fell apart."
~Footsteps, Pearl Jam

***

"Smashed up my sanity
Smashed up my integrity
Smashed up what I believed in
Smashed up what’s left of me
Smashed up my everything
Smashed up all that was true
Gonna smash myself to pieces
I don’t know what else to do."
~Gave Up, Nine Inch Nails

***

"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that’s real
The needle tears a hole
The old familiar sting
Try to kill it all away
But I remember everything."
~Hurt, Nine Inch Nails

***

"Cut my life into pieces
I’ve reached my last resort
Suffocation, no breathing
Don’t give a fuck if I cut my arm bleeding
Do you even care if I die bleeding?
Would it be wrong, would it be right
If I took my life tonight
Chances are that I might
Mutilation out of sight
And I’m contemplating suicide.
 ~Last Resort, Papa Roach

***

"Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live."
~ Résumé, Dororthy Parker
~featured in "Girl, Interrupted"

***

"Now something’s wrong with me
I’m bleeding profusely
And this seems natural
To me I fuck up every day."
~Never Enough, Papa Roach

***

"Delia’s arms were inscribed with a grid of self- inflicted wounds, an intricate text of self-loathing"
~Brightness Falls, Jay McInerney

***

"There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain."
~Karl Marx

***

"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."
~Coma White, Marilyn Manson

***