"Seven Cities was an ancient civilization, steeped in the power of antiquity, where Ascendants once walked on every trader track, every footpath, every lost road between forgotten places. It was said the sands hoarded power within their sussurating currents, that every stone had soaked up sorcery like blood, and that beneath every city lay the ruins of countless other cities, older cities, cities that went back to the First Empire itself. It was said each city rose on the backs of ghosts, the substance of spirits thick like layers of crushed bone; that each city forever wept beneath the streets, forever laughed, shouted, hawked wares and bartered and prayed and drew first breaths that brought life and the last breaths that announced death. Beneath the streets there were dreams, wisdom, foolishness, fears, rage, grief, lust and love and bitter hatred."
— Steven Erikson (Deadhouse Gates)

"Belief is the death of intelligence."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases. "
— Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati)

"Anyone in the United States today who isn't paranoid must be crazy."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself."
— Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati)

"...reality is always plural and mutable."
— Robert Anton Wilson (Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati)

"Entropy requires no maintenance"
— Robert Anton Wilson

"Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons"
— Robert Anton Wilson (The Illuminati Papers)

"I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.
"
— Robert Anton Wilson

"An archaeologist is a ghoul with credentials."
— Robert Joseph Shea

"It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea."
— Robert Anton Wilson

"Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence"
— Robert Anton Wilson

"Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing."
— R. Scott Bakker (The Darkness That Comes Before)

"The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth."
— George R.R. Martin

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
— Jack Kerouac

"If one were to take the Bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the Bible seriously, one must be already mad."
— Aleister Crowley

"The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without."
— Aleister Crowley

"Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions': a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness."
— Aleister Crowley

"The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal."
— Aleister Crowley

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."
— Aleister Crowley

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. "
— Charles Bukowski

"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."
— Charles Bukowski (Women: A Novel)

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
— Charles Bukowski