"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
— Hunter S. Thompson

"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves."
— Brendan Behan

"I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse."
— Brendan Behan

"When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
"
— Brendan Behan

"Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful."
— Milan Kundera

"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."
— Milan Kundera

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
— Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)

"I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this."
— Will Self

"An English gentleman never shines his shoes, but then nor does a lazy bastard."
— Will Self (Dorian: An Imitation)

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
— Henry Miller

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
— Henry Miller

"Not today! No, never again would she sit by the window, her back turned so she would not see him walk down the flagstone path with Dr Danzer, the limp volume of her favourite Bach spread open to the first page of the text, the black notes swarming before her eyes, her fingers arching in elaborate dumb-show as they practised the first trill, her mind on the beats, the leaning upon the upper note, the precise apperception of the stopping point - not a moment to soon, not a moment too late - and in her ears once more the sound, the slow dignity, of Anna Magdalena's sarabande, a delicate ornament for her melancholy."
— John Franklin Bardin (Devil take the Blue-tail Fly)

"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter, try again, fail again, fail better."
— Samuel Beckett