FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

"One cannot get rid of anything, one cannot get over anything, one cannot repel anything-everything hurts. Men and things obtrude too closely; experiences strike one too deeply; memory becomes a festering wound."

MARILYNNE ROBINSON

"Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house. Those outside can watch you if they want, but you need not see them."

JOHN CURRIN

"I’d like to get the sex thing over with, but I realized I’m not done with it."

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

"The singers had bad skin or wore boots. Song after song throbbed with secret pain."

PETER SOTOS

"Once again, I think there is little art being done that really owns up to such intense possibilities."

CHALMERS JOHNSON

"History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless."

BRET EASTON ELLIS

"... where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change, or that the world could be a better place through one’s taking pleasure in a look or a feeling or a gesture, or receiving another person’s love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term 'generosity of spirit' applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire-meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in... this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged."