Stanley Elkin Quotes

When things get bad enough, your only resort is to lie in bed and start praying.

Suicide is the only way out.

People don't usually come see me because things are going well.

Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)

I knew I was in trouble, but I thought I was in hell.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

Everybody faces pain. Everybody has trauma.

I saw tough times, and there were many nights when I would just cry out aloud.

I won the argument against the knife that night, but barely. I had some other good ideas around that time--about how jumping off a building or blowing my brains out with a gun might stop the suffering. but something about spending a night with a knife in my hand did it. The next morning I called my friend Susan as the sun came up, begged her to help me. I don't think a woman in the whole history of my family had ever done that before, had ever sat in the middle of the road like that and said, in the middle of her life, "I cannot walk another step further--somebody has to help me.

I feel like dying when I'm helpless

I can almost understand why people leap from bridges.

I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself

Sometimes survival is the worst alternative there is

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry; But were we burdened with light weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain.

I'm too much of a coward to kill myself. And too much of a coward to live

Suicide - when I think of it, to me it means someone had a lot of problems and they couldn't fight through them anymore. That's not cowardly. It's sad and nothing but.

I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.

There is only one prospect worse than being chained to an intolerable existence: The nightmare of a botched attempt to end it.

Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

What I really felt like, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would've done it, too, if I'd been sure somebody'd cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn't want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory.

Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.

I know that my life is going to be hell from here on.

I certainly wouldn't say that my life is a disaster, but there have been moments where I've felt like that.

People say you have to hit rock bottom, and, I can tell you, almost dying is as rock bottom as it gets.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.