Quotations
"'My dear,' he said, 'so many people are disgusting about so many things.'" -Agatha Christie, Murder In Three Acts

"But I was quite breathless at the thought of what I had done. I had shown somebody both sides of my life. Told him everything as sincerely and truthfully as I could. Taken immense pains to explain things about my submerged life that really were disgusting and never could possibly see the light of literary day. On the whole I had made myself out far worse than I was — more boastful, more cynical, more calculating. And there sat the man I had confided in, singing to himself and smiling…. It moved me so that real tears came into my eyes. I saw them glittering on my long silky lashes — so charming." -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"God, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?" -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"'Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free; the next, this. Here we are among the breadcrumbs and the stained napkins again. That knife is already congealing with grease. Disorder, sordidity and corruption surrounds us. We have been taking into our mouths the bodies of dead birds. It is with these greasy crumbs, slobbering over napkins, and little corpses that we have to build. Always it begins again; always there is the enemy; eyes meeting ours; fingers twitching ours; the effort waiting. Call the waiter. Pay the bill. We must pull ourselves up out of the chairs. We must find our coats. We must go. Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, "Now I am rid of all that", find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.'" -Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Quotations
"'Isn't she the sweetest thing in the way av mothers?' asked Father Cassidy. 'I keep her to look at.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

"But the heart of the father is not as the heart of the mother." -L.M. Montgomery, "The Dream-Child," Further Chronicles of Avonlea

"'A mother is the best thing in the world — I realized that when I lost mine,' said Alan gently." -L.M. Montgomery, "Four Winds"

"And mother-like, Mrs. Jo forgot the threatened chastisement in tender lamentations over the happy scapegrace…" -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"Dan clung to her in speechless gratitude, feeling the blessedness of mother love, — that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it." -Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

"Without knowing it, he had been centralised, polarised in his mother. It was she who had kept him." -D.H. Lawrence, "Daughters of the Vicar"

"She thought her mother looked wonderfully beautiful with her back to the leafy window. There was something comforting in the sight of her that Linda felt she could never do without." -Katherine Mansfield, "Prelude"

Quotations
"'We do things, say things, that later we regret with all our souls…'" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can't get it into shape; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in. Looking back, of course, is equally fatal to Art. It's keeping yourself poor. Art can't and won't stand poverty." -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"'I love that sound,' he mumbled into her hair. 'Blackbirds at dawn.'
'I hate it. Makes me think I've done something I'll regret.'" -David Nicholls, One Day

"To lie and regret the emergence from the womb as the umbilical cord is snipped, neatly, and the knot tied." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Laura: What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear.
-The Hours

Quotations
"Calm is the one thing that will never let us down.  And Amalfitano said: everything else lets us down?  And the voice: yes, that's right, it's hard to admit, I mean it's hard to have to admit it to you, but that's the honest-to-God truth.  Ethics lets us down?  The sense of duty lets us down?  Honesty lets us down?  Curiosity lets us down?  Love lets us down?  Bravery lets us down?  Art lets us down?  That's right, said the voice, everything lets us down, everything.  Or lets you down, which isn't the same thing but for our purposes it might as well be, except calm, calm is the one thing that never lets us down, though that's no guarantee or anything, I have to tell you." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666, (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"That calm acceptance went to my head at last. It fascinated me. It led me on and on till I threw every card that I possessed at him and sat back and watched him arrange them in his hand." -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"…'Tis calm indeed! So calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness…." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight"

"…Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men,
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen,
And mingle among the jostling crowd,
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud—
I often come to this quiet place,
To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face,
And gaze upon thee in silent dream,
For in thy lonely and lovely stream
An image of that calm life appears
That won my heart in my greener years." -William Cullen Bryant, "Green River"

Quotation
"All the same, without being morbid, and giving way to—to memories and so on, I must confess that there does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. However hard I work and tire myself I have only to stop to know it is there, waiting. I often wonder if everybody feels the same. One can never know. But isn't it extraordinary that under his sweet, joyful little singing it was just this sadness—ah, what is it? —that I heard?" -Katherine Mansfield, "The Canary"

Quotations
"Elizabeth's spirit's soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. 'How could you begin?' said she. 'I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?'
'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.'" -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"'I am happier than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me.'" -Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

"My mother then said she wished she knew why she had married him, and would like still more to know why he had married her.
My father said, 'You were so lovely — you've no idea.'" -Elizabeth Bowen, "Songs My Father Sang Me"

"'I have given my heart to another,' he repeated over and over again to himself." -Edward Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

"They fell in love for no reason at all, in the park, on a bench…" -Graham Greene, "When Greek Meets Greek"

"'Forgive me. Don't love me any more. Yes. Love me. Love me.'" -Katherine Mansfield, "Je ne parle pas français"

"For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? — some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people…" -Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

"'You've destroyed my loneliness.'" -Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

Vesper: I can't resist waking you. Every time I do you look at me as if you hadn't seen me in years. Makes me feel reborn.
-Casino Royale

Ashley: She's the only dream I ever had that didn't die in the face of reality.
-Gone With the Wind

Mr. Darcy: If, however, your feelings have changed. I would have to tell you, you have bewitched me body and soul, and I love— I love— I love you.
-Pride & Prejudice

Harry: I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend a day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I wanna talk to before I go to sleep at night.
-When Harry Met Sally…

Harry: I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of you life to start as soon as possible.
-When Harry Met Sally…

Quotations
1. "'I don't have much time, I have to haul corpses.  I don't have much time, I have to breathe, eat, drink, sleep.  I don't have much time, I have to keep the gears meshing.  I don't have much time, I'm busy living.  I don't have much time, I'm busy dying.  As you can imagine, there were no more questions.'" -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

2. "'Why isn't the wind happy, Mummy?' asked Walter one night.
'Because it is remembering all the sorrow of the world since time began,' answered Anne." -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside

3. "'…I know it's good for me. Horrible things always are good for you, I suppose. After you've been killed a few times you don't mind it. But the first time one does — squirm.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

4. "'Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake — especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.'" -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

5. "…and come back, come back, come back to me." -Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room

6. "One can get over anything in time." -Katherine Mansfield, "The Canary"

7. "'It makes me very sad at times to think about her. But really, Marilla, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

Random Musing
Sticking quotes #6 and #7 in there is kind of misleading. I don't feel that way. Not at all. That's just how I think I'll probably feel one day. Or how I hope I'll feel one day. That's "one day," not "right now." Right now I'm just hoping that I'll eventually get to a point where the world seems utterly interesting. Or even remotely interesting. Cause it doesn't right now. Instead it seems surreal and sad and inexplicable.

I guess what I'm saying is that what I find so awful about right now is that no matter what else is going on in life the one all-consuming feeling I have can essentially be summed up by:

                 "…wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad."