He did not think he was fleeing from anything behind him, nor, most importantly, towards anything in front of him; in other words he fully accepted the paradox implied in the conclusion that his movements had direction but no aim.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

He had to ignore the itch, the desire to intervene, for the purpose and significance of action were being corroded away by its thoroughgoing lack of significance.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

I want to be an idiot and tell the king good and proper that his country is rubbish.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

For decades he had acted in the belief that his intellect and sensibility led him to reject a world whose products were unbearable to either intellect or sensibility, but were always available for criticism by the same.... such mad grandiosely dignified declarations could hardly be regarded as anything but eccentric.  However, this did not stop him making them.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

I still cannot understand why it should be the cause of such universal celebration ... that we have climbed out of the trees.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

Our every moment is passed in a procession across dawns and day's-ends of the orbiting earth, across successive waves of winter and summer, threading the planets and the stars.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

He took it for granted that his great concern for the universe was unlikely to be reciprocated by the universe for him. ... His relationship to his fellow human beings was governed by the same unconscious assumption; being unable to detect mutability where there plainly wasn't any, he made like the raindrop relinquishing hold of the cloud which contained it.

László Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance

Nobody with four Aces wants a New Deal.

From Davos 2012 by way of The New Yorker of March 5, 2012

If I acted, then the faith would surely follow.  After that, I would believe because I had acted.

John le Carre, Absolute Friends

How could anybody, let alone a man like me, expect to blend in in a land where the people are so very, very small.

T. Coraghessan Boyle, "Los Gigante" in The New Yorker of February 6, 2012.

Most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

They were people who had no doubt whatsoever that the more narrow-minded they became, the closer they got to heaven.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Nobody's easier to fool than the person who is convinced that he is right.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

He knew that bad premonitions have a far higher accuracy rate than good ones.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on,
and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.


William Shakespeare (The Tempest) as quoted by
Stephen Greenblatt, Will In The World

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye
And all my soul, and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed
Beated and chopp'd with tanned antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
   'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 62

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it,
That thou art then estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being strange to me,
That, undividable, incorporate,
Am better than thy dear self's better part.
Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too. 

William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 2

Not only that anything should be, but that this very thing should be, is mysterious!  Philosophy stares, but brings no reasoned solution, for from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.

Wiliam James, as quoted by Geoffrey O'Brien in The New York Review of July 14, 2011

Ingrate, he had of me all he could have;
I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood,
Though free to fall.

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III.