can't you see you're incapable of thinking for yourself? the only thing you do is follow the norms imposed on you. can't you see that this whole thing is a superficial act? are you even capable of feeling something, really feeling it?

every family has a myth for the young to inherit —— an undocumented fable passed between mouths, an illness to be contracted —— as if the very words were a blight to infect the youth with and let them know they're now welcome into the fold.

she screams as if the world didn't exist, she screams as if words had split in two and lost all meaning, she screams as if beneath this hell there was another hell, one from which she didn't want to escape.

two mothers exist in my memory —— one i preserved as a child, and the one i remember as an adult. they bleed and blur together like film strips melting in the sun. i loved my mother. i hate my mother. it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

i think to myself, "if i were an ice pick, i'd scramble your brain like a plate of eggs." i think to myself, "if i were a black hole, i'd swallow you and shit you out in tiny pieces." i think to myself, "if i were a tomahawk, i'd split you right down the middle."

the devil's also believe and tremble.

he tried to hate God, but he doesn’t believe in God. he tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral, but he couldn't keep it up, because hating everyone is the same as hating no one.

gluttony: you want more. so much more for yourself. many will say you are gluttonous, but this is not a negative in all respects. the need to engulf the world whole, to consume everything, to try to hold it all, holds a necessary level of passion.

i don't want to know what you've done, or what you think about doing. i don't want to know. so don't tell me.

the world of love wants no monsters in it.

there is a point in you which no doctor will ever understand, and for me this is the point which saves you and makes you august, pure, wonderful: you are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know.

keep me weak, keep me depending on you; keep me meek, keep me needing you.

because i am the most skilled extractor. i know how to search your mind and find your secrets. i know the tricks, and i can teach them to your subconscious so that even when you're asleep, your guard is never down.

she had the human look of a domesticated animal.

today, i’m the butcher. tomorrow, i might be the cattle.

limb-to-limb, split spine to sternum, ripped open and spread out, swallowed in my bowels..

i guess we all have things from our childhood we eventually have to let go of.

my mother's mother, whom she never spoke to after leaving her house at eighteen, had hands like barbed wire. everywhere she touched bled. every word she spoke wounded. my mother, still an open sore by the time my brother and i arrived, inherited those hands.

one day, i woke up in a hospital. someone asked me, "what's your problem?" and i said, "i'm an alcoholic and an addict." and he said, "no, that's how you have been treating your problem."

it's difficult, loving someone that can't help hurting you. how much harm is forgivable when you know it was done to them first?