Quotes from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“It gives me strength to have somebody to fight for; I can never fight for myself, but, for others, I can kill.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“You," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world, and that, I believe, is why you are in so much pain.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“It is not seen as insane when a fighter, under an attack that will inevitable lead to his death, chooses to take his own life first. In fact, this act has been encouraged for centuries, and is accepted even now as an honorable reason to do the deed. How is it any different when you are under attack by your own mind?”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I only sleep with people I love, which is why I have insomnia.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors...
Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat...
What then was music created for?
Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves?
I think I know.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people's reaction to my trying to commit suicide.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I am my heart’s undertaker. Daily I go and retrieve its tattered remains, place them delicately into its little coffin, and bury it in the depths of my memory, only to have to do it all again tomorrow.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“What's the big fucking deal? Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out alright.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I can explain myself: If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street. I’m not joking. You’ve been told to look both ways before crossing the street, and the sidewalk is your friend, right? Wrong. I’ve spent years walking sidewalks at night. I’ve looked around me when it was dark, when there were men following me, creeping out of alleyways, attempting to goad me into speaking to them and shouting obscenities at me when I wouldn’t, and I suddenly realised that the only place left to go was the middle of street. But why would I risk it? Because the odds are in my favour. In the States, someone is killed in a car accident on average every 12.5 minutes, while someone is raped on average every 2.5 minutes. Even when factoring in that, one, I am generously including ALL car-related accidents and not just those involving accidents, and two, that the vast majorities of rapes still go unreported […] And, thus, this is now the way I live my life: out in the open, in the middle of everything, because the middle of the street is actually the safest place to walk.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“And, what's more, this 'precious' body, the very same that is hooted and honked at, demeaned both in daily life as well as in ever existing form of media, harrassed, molested, raped, and, if all that wasn't enough, is forever poked and prodded and weighed and constantly wrong for eating too much, eating too little, a million details which all point to the solitary girl, to EVERY solitary girl, and say: Destroy yourself.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I cut myself because you wouldn't let me cry.
I cried because you wouldn't let me speak.
I spoke because you wouldn't let me shine.
I shone because I thought you loved me...”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I'm not stupid. I know exactly what's going on, and I'm not fighting it. If I have to go through this, I will glean from it any small benefit I can receive. I will not fight this. Bring it on. Bring on the cure. Bring on the fucking happy. I'm committed.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I myself am not afraid of ghosts; I am afraid of people.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“If leeches ate peaches instead of my blood, then I would be free to drink tea in the mud!”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves - not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“There is no suggestion box in the Psych Ward.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“We are machines, all of us...
And what does a machine do when too much is assigned to it? When too much coal, too much ink, too much information is forced violently through its channels?
Why, it stutters, it chokes, finally, it shuts down.
Where do they put the broken machines?
There is only one place.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Is it my relative sanity that makes my life here so painful, so desperate, so hopeless? Loosen my grip on that, and perhaps life both in the asylum and out becomes much easier...”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“You young romantics find your "soul" in the strangest places.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Sometimes I don’t eat for days simply because I want a proper excuse to feel as empty inside as I do. Untreated,”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“The funny thing about mental hospitals is that they strip away any remaining reason you have to live, but deny you the means to do anything about it. It is fascinating to me that a suicide attempt, by default, legally lands you into the asylum, the psych ward, the loony bin, the nut house—call it what you will, it’s all the same. Perhaps you are crazy, perhaps you are not, but I do not believe that, in itself alone, attempting suicide proves anything at all about your mental state, save that, upon weighing the merits of living and dying, you found that one outweighed the other. Is this crazy? I see nothing insane about it at all. Socially unacceptable to be sure, but not mad.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“Revenge itself may indeed be the best revenge, but slaying one's enemy does not give back what they stole.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I merely question the sanity of those who would criminalize, and, worse, brand as insane, the poor, the wretched, the oppressed, the persecuted, the abused, who find a death of their own choosing preferable to a life of someone else’s.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“I attempted to take my own life, a choice I sincerely regret the failure of. Now, I endure the judgment and the stigma that follows, and will continue to follow me for the rest of my days upon this earth.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“whilst women may indeed have evolved from monkeys, men have not evolved at all.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“The S.S.S. is a small and secret consortium consisting of the inmates of intellect, and existing solely for the purpose of keeping each other alive, for we all know that once we lose our wits we will begin to die.”
― Emilie Autumn, quote from The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

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