"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

"Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
— Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)

"We're here to get each other through this thing, whatever it is."
— Mark Vonnegut

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see."
— Arthur Schopenhauer

"If anyone spends almost the whole day in reading...he gradually loses the capacity for thinking...This is the case with many learned persons; they have read themselves stupid"
— Arthur Schopenhauer

"the world is my idea"
— Arthur Schopenhauer

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
— Arthur Schopenhauer

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you - and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!"
— John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
— Hermann Hesse

"Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again."
— Hermann Hesse

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish."
— Hermann Hesse

"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all."
— Arthur C. Clarke