“Do you know what your problem is? You can’t live with the idea that someone might leave. So instead of being happy for me, like any normal person, you’re pissed of because ooh, oh no, Hassan doesn’t like me anymore. You’re so goddamn scared of the idea that someone might dump you that your whole fucking life is built around not getting left behind. Well, it doesn’t work, kafir. It just — it’s not just dumb, it’s ineffective. Because then you’re not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you’re only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.” (>>)

“My eye is still used to searching for her in a crowd. My breath is still used to catching when I see her and the light is angled just right. My body is still used to hers moving next to mine. So the distance — anything short of contact — is a constant rejection. We were together for six months, and in each of those months my desire found new ways to be fueled by her. It’s over can’t kill that. All of the songs I wrote in my head were for her, and now I can’t stop them from playing. This null soundtrack. I’m tired, she’d said, and I told her that I was tired, too, and that I wanted to take some time for us, too. And then she’d said, No, I’m tired of you, and I slipped into the surreal-but-true universe where we were over and I wasn’t over it. She was no longer any kind of here that I could get to.” (>>)

“And love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken ‘hallelujah.’ ” (>>) [MP3]

“It’s hard enough trying to drink another winter all alone.” (>>) [MP3]

“sometimes that whole time/space continuum is a real bitch…”

“Foy felt a rush of adrenaline and his heart pounded. He had forgotten how wonderful a thing it is to make a woman laugh, to be lost in conversation with her and to see a smile come onto her face. It was almost like male banter, but with a lighter touch. Cautious and polite but pushing the edge just a bit, just enough but not too much.” (>>)

“People go on about places like Starbucks being unpersonal and all that, but what if that’s what you want? I’d be lost, if JJ and people like that got their way, and there was nothing unpersonal in the world. I like to know that there are big places without windows where no one gives a shit. You need confidence to go into small places with regular customers, small bookshops and small music shops and small restaurants and cafés. I’m happiest in the Virgin Megastore and Borders and Starbucks and Pizza Express, where no one gives a shit, and no one knows who you are. My mum and dad are always going on about how soulless those places are, and I’m like, Der. That’s the point.” (>>)

“the ring that you twist,
the song that you hum” (>>) [MP3]

“They say time will kill the pain
I say pain is gonna kill my time
Lord won’t you save me
Or leave me alone
Cause when it’s good, it’s so, so good
But when it’s gone, it’s gone (>>) [MP3]

“And all I see, it could never make me happy
and all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing” (>>) [MP3]

“For awhile I sat there staring at her photograph
for awhile I cried and tried not to make a scene
There was a time when we were young I used to make her laugh
but life is long
My love has gone away from me (>>) [MP3]

So I’ll see you when you’re 40, lost and all alone
being comforted by strangers you’ll never have to know.
Not sad because you lost me but sad because you thought
it was cool to be sad.” (>>) [MP3]

So say you’re feeling kind of sad and anxious, missing some girl or whatever, but you’re not totally depressed. You could go either way. It’s two in the fucking morning and you have to wake up in four hours, but you can’t sleep. Obviously you’re going to put on a record–or open up a playlist, you damn whippersnappers… but what do you choose?

You could listen to a sad song, something old and smooth and emotionally self-destructive, something by Otis Redding or Patsy Cline. That would be true to your feelings and comforting in a familiar but unhealthy way, like that bad relationship you kept going back to until your soul resembled Leonardo DiCaprio in the subway bathroom scene from Basketball Diaries.

Or, you could put on something new and fast and irrelevant, something with clever production and loud guitars. Something to numb your heart and distract your mind, like when Americans see pictures of genocide on the news and flip over to Desperate Housewives or ESPN. Motion City Soundtrack or maybe some Hot Hot Heat.

Because these choices are important. “Which came first, the music or the misery,” you know? Wallowing in beautifully harmonized self-pity starts to get a little pathetic by the time you reach your mid-twenties. But is it healthy to manipulate your feelings in order to be, well… healthy?

Maybe there’s a reason all those shallow preppy kids are so happy driving around in the BMW convertibles their parents buy them, listening to Britney Spears or N*Sync or whatever the hell the music industry is shitting out these days. But do you really want to live like that? I mean, those people acquire our contempt for good reason.

So, what do you do? Hunch down in the closet with Otis and a bottle of red, waiting for the voices to tire themselves out, or play Solitaire on your laptop with Britney until she bores the hell out of you and you can go back to sleep?

Or maybe you just make up a mix of both, sort it randomly and write something slightly neurotic for your blog.

“And it is true what you said
that I live like a hermit in my own head
But when the sun shines again
I’ll pull the curtains and blinds to let the light in” (>>) [MP3]

“I want to be loved by someone, even if it’s a false love. I want someone to make me feel good, to believe in me. And that night I wanted this woman. I wanted her physically and emotionally. I wanted her to help me deny who I really was. I wanted her to take away the sadness. I wanted her to be my savior…

“[But] I don’t know if I will get emotionally entangled with [her] only to be shoved down into the dirt, more bruised than I was before…

“So […] I invite companionship and seek community, need community–But all I really have is God. People are too much like… people; they’re too much like me. I need someone who loves in ways I never could. I need God.

“But, like Jesus, I wrestle with God. ‘Take this cup from me. There must be another way.’ And then I learn that there isn’t another way. I learn that God is unreasonable. In fact, he always has been. Forgiveness is unreasonable. Jesus dying on a cross is unreasonable…” (>>)

“Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures” (>>)

“Stand in the light. Stand in the light. Stand in the light.” (>>) [MP3]

“When you play my song
play it slowly
play it like I’m sad and lonely” (>>) [MP3]

“but you came so close and i assumed
you were looking for the piece of yourself that’s lost…” (>>) [MP3]

“I can’t hold you, but I’m still kissing you
I don’t want to, but I’m still missing you” (>>) [MP3]

“Part of being [I can’t bring myself to quote this term, even if it was used sarcastically, so let’s just replace it with ‘friends’] is giving the other person the encouragement and the freedom to pursue their dreams…” (>>)

“I was strong but awkward, born with an armor of imagination.” (>>) [MP3]

“Excuse me, did I do something wrong? I get invited, then ignored all night long.”
“I’ve been trying, I’m not lying. No one’s perfect, I’ve got baggage.”
“Life’s too short, babe, time is flying. I’m looking for baggage that goes with mine.”
“I should tell you…” (>>) [MP3]

“She said, ‘Easy, Tiger.’ ” (>>)

“Our youth is fleeting
Old age is just around the bend
And I can’t wait to go grey
I’ll sit in wonder
Of every love that could’ve been
If I’d only thought of something
Charming to say” (>>) [MP3]

“I caught myself thinking
I caught myself thinking once again
I have to try to keep my mind out of this
Try not to pretend” (>>) [MP3]

“We say so much about the healing power of the body of Christ, but it seems like most of my friends in the body were too busy attending church choir or leading their small groups to check up on me.” (>>)

“…I’m not cheerful or domestic. I’m drab, crabby and friendless. I fill my days fighting a constant battle to keep my dignity. Loneliness is my curse–our species’ curse–it’s the gun that shoots the bullets that makes us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.” (>>)

“I remember being single for so very long — I remember making mental lists of compromises I was willing to make in order to get me to 76.5 years without snapping. If I only go to see two movies a week, one by myself, one with a friend, that’ll make two nights of the week pass without quaking. Don’t phone my friends in relationships too often or I’ll look too desperate. Don’t become godmother to too many of my friends’ children or else I’ll become a maiden-aunt punch line. Don’t drink more than three drinks a night ever because I like drinking, and it could easily plaster over all of my cracks.” (>>)

“After a few minutes of this, Gary, Kent’s best friend, tinkled his glass and the group sat down. On easels up front were color photocopy enlargements of Kent’s life: Kent white-water rafting; Kent at a cigar party; Kent playing Frisbee golf; Kent and Barb lunching in a Cabo San Lucas patio bistro; Kent at his stag party, pretending to drink a yard-long glass of beer. Each of these photos emphasized the absence of similar photos in my own life.” (>>)

“I am an affectionate man but I have much trouble showing it.

“When I was younger I used to worry so much about being alone–of being unlovable or incapable or love. As the years went on, my worries changed. I worried that I had become incapable of having a relationship, of offering intimacy. I felt as though the world lived inside a warm house at night and I was outside, and I couldn’t be seen–because I was out there in the night. But now I am inside that house and it feels just the same.

“Being alone here now, all of my old fears are erupting–the fears I thought I had buried forever by getting married: fear of loneliness; fear that being in and out of love too many times itself makes you harder to love; fear that I would never experience real love; fear that someone would fall in love with me, get extremely close, learn everything about me and then pull the plug; fear that love is only important up until a certain point after which everything is negotiable.” (>>)

“She took a mouthful of rain
With a gutter full of pills
She wrote, ‘I handled the pain
But it’s the hope that kills’
So take care of yourself
And don’t worry about me
‘Cause everybody always
Everybody always leaves” (>>) [MP3]

“I’m fucking starved for love
I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite
I want the nourishment
I need to drink it just like water, and it will sustain me” (>>) [MP3]

“It has been the same in all my relationships. There was always, within me, this demand for affection, this needy, clingy monkey on my back. I wouldn’t be satisfied unless the girl wanted to get married right away, unless she was panicky about it, and even then I would imagine a non-existent scenario in which she finds another man or breaks up with me because of the way I look. I would find myself getting depressed about conversations that never even took place.” (>>)

“I want someone to pluck me off the side of the road and love me with total abandon. I’m not talking about God here, not something ephemeral, but a woman, a flesh and blood woman. A woman who’ll cast out my self doubt and drive it into the lake to be drowned. A woman who thinks I’m worth everything.” (>>)