"Paint what you like and die happy"
— Henry Miller

"My genius is in my nostrils."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Index)

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
— Henry Miller

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

"The following of authority is the denial of intelligence...& in the process, self-knowledge & freedom are abandoned."
— Jiddu Krishnamurti (Education and the Significance of Life)

"There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy"
— Henry Miller

"If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts."
— Henry Miller

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
— Henry Miller

"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
— Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)

""..and one day this will be the other heart that beats inside of you and on that day you will feel whole for the first time""
— Rob Ryan

"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

"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger."
— The Joker

"Do you hate people?

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

"Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)

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

"Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying.

Ah, the bright stars of the night.

Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; but no dazzling newcomer. And so little time left, so little time...

Yet still two-faced Medusa laughs from behind the clouds, demanding homage. Homage, Medusa, or a sword, a blade sharper than death itself.

The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death.

No stars tonight, my love.

No Selene."
— Elizabeth Redfern (The Music of the Spheres)

"Consider this: every time a last thought is repeated, a story comes to an end. People need clarity, and that is what stories are for. Our own lives are complicated---nothing is ever resolved and nothing is ever over. But stories end, so they can be pure. The joy is pure and the suffering is pure and even the questions that can't be answered are precise and clear.

A lost dog has finally found his family, and they're shouting his name and they hold their arms out and he jumps into them...

It is the end of the argument, and they are more in love than ever...

The criminal has been caught at last, and punishment is waiting...

Here is the baby, born finally, healthy, and the mother is sweaty but she's okay too...

These are ends, but they are also beginnings, and in life they will end and begin again and again. Every time something happens a world of possible action opens up, and possible meanings. But in fiction, every story is an end, because we are only reading the end. Its last notes are sonorous and beautiful and final. They are beautiful. They are final.

Say a marriage is tragic. Say that the people close to the couple can find no words for the things they have done. Say at every point where the body of the world touches their bodies, people have bad dreams and lose their faith and turn their eyes away from things they once trusted. Even if this is true, it doesn't matter: it isn't the end."
— J. Sweeney

"...never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strong because you like to dream and dream. And no one could yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy."
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"It occured to her that pleasure, no matter how deep, was a ghostly, ephemeral thing. Love might make the world go round, but she was convinced it ws the cries of the badly wounded andf deeply afflicted which spun the universe on the great glass pole of it's axis."
— Stephen King

"I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. "
— Voltaire

"I would rather obey a fine lion, much stronger than myself, than two hundred rats of my own species."
— Voltaire

"Answer me, you who believe that animals are only machines. Has nature arranged for this animal to have all the machinery of feelings only in order for it not to have any at all?"
— Voltaire

"If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine."
— P.G. Wodehouse (Love Among the Chickens)

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
— Voltaire

"'Sal, we gotta go and never stop going till we get there.'
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't know but we gotta go.'"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence."
— Ambrose Bierce

"Animals are my friends...and I don't eat my friends."
— George Bernard Shaw

"Drinking is fun! It makes me feel horrible and sexy!"
— Warren Ellis

"I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars."
— Og Mandino

"We have art in order not to die of the truth. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Plato was a bore."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Only idiots fail to contradict themselves three times a day."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"One must give value to their existence by behaving as if ones very existence were a work of art."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit at all."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

""The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously."

"
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"And once you are awake, you shall remain awake eternally. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra - A Book For All And None)

"Love is not consolation. It is light. "
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"The mind can make a heaven out of hell and a hell out of heaven."
— John Milton

"The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. "
— Philip Roth (The Dying Animal)

"You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature."
— Philip Roth (American Pastoral)

"I came to New York and in only hours, New York did what it does to people: awakened the possibilities. Hope breaks out."
— Philip Roth

"I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"Anything that just costs money is cheap."
— John Steinbeck