"The only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor: A Novel)

"A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face."
— Jim Butcher (Storm Front)

"Nay, but prithee, with sprinkles 'pon it instead," I said solemnly, "and frosting of white."
— Jim Butcher (Small Favor)

"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching -- they are your family. "
— Jim Butcher

"Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.

Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - gradutaing, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expecations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.

And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.

Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.

Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another."
— Jim Butcher

"Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting."
— e.e. cummings

"I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning"
— Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)

"I'm into, oh murders and executions mostly. It depends."
— Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)

"Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them."
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.
"
— Chuck Klosterman

"You never know how much time you'll have."
— Stephenie Meyer (The Host)

"The future you have today might not be the future you have tomorrow."
— Rant Casey

"I don't want to die without any scars."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)

"I live in my dreams. Other people live in dreams too . . . just not their own."
— Hermann Hesse

""There are two ways to look at life. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone's life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don't realize it." "
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, And Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything. "
— Chuck Klosterman

"If you define your personality as creative, it only means you understand what is perceived to be creative by the world at large, so you're really just following a rote creative template. That's the opposite of creativity. Everybody is wrong about everything, just about all the time.

But ANYWAY..."
— Chuck Klosterman

"The Sims is an escapist vehicle for people who want to escape to where they already are, which is why I thought this game was made precisely for me."
— Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)

"Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar"
— Jim Butcher (Dead Beat)

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

"If you don't change, reality in the end forces that change upon you."
— Stuart Wilde

"He'll pinch a cigarette between his fingers. He'll take a drag, blow that drag between his lips. He'll look at the firl with eyes the colour of the sky before it turns black and he will see heaven, and the pictures of all those other girls floating inside his head will blow away like the clouds of the cigarette and he'll see only the girl inside himself and the world will stop."
— Maureen Medved (The Tracey Fragments)

"did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms?"
— Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun)

"What's so noble about being dead?"
— Dalton Trumbo ( Johnny Got His Gun )

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
— Robert Frost

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"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.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

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