"I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However, I don't know beans about my disease, and I am not sure what is bothering me. I don't treat it and never have, though I respect medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, let's say sufficiently so to respect medicine. (I am educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am.) No, I refuse to treat it out of spite. You probably will not understand that. Well, but I understand it. Of course I can't explain to you just whom I am annoying in this case by my spite. I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "get even" with the doctors by not consulting them. I know better than anyone that I thereby injure only myself and no one else. But still, if I don't treat it, its is out of spite. My liver is bad, well then-- let it get even worse!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground: with White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead)

"I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God."
— Albert Camus (L'etranger)

"Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life. "
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

"I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world."
— Albert Camus (L'etranger)

"Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen."
— Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)

"She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste."
— Julio Cortázar (Hopscotch)

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece"
— Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is."
— Albert Camus

"Live to the point of tears."
— Albert Camus

"An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts."
— Albert Camus

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?"
— Albert Camus

"I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."
— Albert Camus (The Stranger)

"He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"Insanity is contagious."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

"
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"'What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it"
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere."
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

""They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?" "
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all. "
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"You have a morbid aversion to dying. You probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."

"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."

"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."

"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."

"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated, or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive!"

"Yes, sir. Perhaps I am."

"Don't try to deny it."

"I'm not denying it, sir," said Yossarian, pleased with the miraculous rapport that finally existed between them. "I agree with all you've said."
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"Let others pride themselves about how many pages they have written; I'd rather boast about the ones I've read."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up."
— James Baldwin

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
— Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

"There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!"
— Ray Bradbury

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality."
— Che Guevara

"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground: with White Nights, The Dreams of a Ridiculous Man, and selections from The House of the Dead)

"Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

"I swear to you gentlemen, that to be overly conscious is a sickness, a real, thorough sickness."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

"For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights and Other Stories)

"God knows what is in me in place of me."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Idiot)

"He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"When reason fails, the devil helps!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"But how could you live and have no story to tell?"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights)

"And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights)

"To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

""What do you think?" shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, "you think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can't even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I'll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's. In the first case you are a man, in the second you're no better than a bird. Truth won't escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people's ideas, it's what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?" cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies' hands."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds?"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)