"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
— Albert Camus

"People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Mandarins)

"If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat."
— Simone de Beauvoir

"In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."
— Simone de Beauvoir

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
— Albert Camus

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

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."
— Albert Camus

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Art is the proper task of life. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten."
— Neil Gaiman

"Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins."
— Neil Gaiman

"This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard."
— Neil Gaiman

"Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you can betray them with your tongue."
— Neil Gaiman

"Birds are the last of the dinosaurs. Tiny velociraptors with wings. Devouring defenseless wiggly things and, and nuts, and fish, and, and other birds. They get the early worms. And have you ever watched a chicken eat? They may look innocent, but birds are, well, they're vicious. "
— Neil Gaiman (Anansi Boys)

"Beware of Doors."
— Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere: A Novel)

"People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"Looked into the sky, heavy with smoke and human fat, and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone. It is not God that kills the children, not fate the butchers them, nor destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day."
— Alan Moore (Batman: The Killing Joke)

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?"
— Alan Moore (Watchmen)

"That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics."
— Alan Moore

"You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof. Farewell."
— Alan Moore

"In order to be able to make it, you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. You have to do these things completely and purely without fear, without desire. Because things that we do without lust or result are the purest actions we shall ever take."
— Alan Moore

"Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you...Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations."
— Alan Moore

"Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead."
— Alan Moore (Absolute Watchmen)

"OZYMANDIAS
Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago."
— Alan Moore

"Kiss me and you'll know how important I am."
— Sylvia Plath

"Is there no way out of the mind?"
— Sylvia Plath

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."
— Sylvia Plath

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"I talk to God but the sky is empty."
— Sylvia Plath

"There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but i don't know many of them."
— Sylvia Plath

"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."
— Dodie Smith (I Capture the Castle)

"Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing."
— Sylvia Plath

"... because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)