"And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth. "
— Raymond Carver

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."
— Raymond Chandler (Long Goodbye)

"To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing."
— Aristotle

"[Raymond Chandler] wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered."
— New Yorker

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
— Aristotle (Metaphysics)

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
— T.S. Eliot

"If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you."
— T.S. Eliot

""Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.""
— T.S. Eliot

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
— Kurt Vonnegut

"How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"'I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.' "
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)