"But this is not a world of free freights. One pays according to an iron schedule--for every strength the balanced weakness; for every high a corresponding low; for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times,
with savage usury added."
— Jack London (John Barleycorn)

"Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
— Herman Melville (Moby-Dick, or The Whale)

"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me."
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

"for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men "
— Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings toward the ocean with me."
— Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross. "
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"What though the field be lost?
All is not Lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And the courage never to submit or yeild."
— Satan from John Milton's "Paradise Lost"

"O sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams
That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"Still paying, still to owe.
Eternal woe! "
— John Milton

"Farewell, happy fields, where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! Hail, Infernal World! and thou, profoundest Hell, receive thy new possessor- one who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, and a Hell of Heaven... Here at least we shall be free, th' almighty hath not built here for his envy, will not drive us hence: here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, to reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
— John Milton (Paradise Lost)

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.-Atticus Finch"
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.(Miss Maudie)"
— Harper Lee (To Kill a Mockingbird)

"Books are useless! I only ever read one book, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the color of his skin…but what good does *that* do me?"
— Homer Simpson

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

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
— Abraham Lincoln

"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

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
— Jack London

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."
— Jack London

"And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine."
— Jack London

"Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past."
— Jack London

"He had learned well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the way to Death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed."
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"The proper function of man is to live, not to exsist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
— Jack London

"But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space. "
— Jack London (The Call of the Wild)

"Oh!--and I speak out of later knowledge--Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity."
— Jack London (John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs)

"The book is almost always better than the movie. You could have no better case in point than FROM HELL, Alan Moore's best graphic novel to date, brilliantly illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It's hard to describe just how much better the book is.

It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end."

That's how much better it is."
— Warren Ellis

"Be authentic to your dreams. Be authentic to your own idea about yourself. Grind away at your own minds and bodies until you become your own invention. Be Mad Scientists."
— Warren Ellis

"There's one hole in every revolution, large or small. And it's one word long -- people.

No matter how big the idea is they all stand under, people are small and weak and cheap and frightened.

It's people that kill every revolution."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 1: Back on the Street)

""Tradition": one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking."
— Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan Vol. 4: The New Scum)

"Dance like you're stamping on a human face forever, love like you've been in a serious car crash that minced the front of your brain, stab like no one can arrest you, and live like there's no such thing as God."
— Warren Ellis

"Do you hate people?

I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around."
— Charles Bukowski (The Movie: Barfly)

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
— Charles Bukowski

"That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."
— Charles Bukowski (Women: A Novel)

"There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you."
— Charles Bukowski

"Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink."
— Charles Bukowski

"my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world."
— Charles Bukowski

"“If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you've still got a soul left to lose”"
— Charles Bukowski

"You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics."
— Charles Bukowski (Women: A Novel)

"those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that."
— Charles Bukowski

"you have to die a few times before you can really
live."
— Charles Bukowski (The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems)

"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."
— Charles Bukowski

"Great art is horseshit, buy tacos."
— Charles Bukowski

"I went to the worst of bars
hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.
"
— Charles Bukowski