"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."
— Frank Herbert (Dune)

"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"Off with their heads!"
— Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

"'Make it a human war,' she said fiercely. 'You're the first not to be deceived by my looks. Oh God! The boredom of the chivalrous knights and their milk-maid passion for the fairy tale princess. But I'm not like that ... inside. I'm not. I'm not. Never. Make it a savage war between us. Don't win me ... destroy me!'"
— Alfred Bester (The Stars My Destination)

"We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness."
— George Orwell (1984)

"For a moment, sincere human fury had burned through the training, touched a hot core of genuine rage. He felt shaken, but more whole, more truly himself, then he'd been for years."
— Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix Plus)

"What's chivalrous about saying you've seen a rhinoceros?"
— Eugene Ionesco (Rhinoceros and Other Plays)

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— Haruki Murakami

"There are symbolic dreams-- dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities -- realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councilors of the worm universe. In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me."
— Haruki Murakami (Murakami Omnibus: "A Wild Sheep Chase", "Dance Dance Dance")

"'Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment [. . .] Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.'"
— Haruki Murakami (A Wild Sheep Chase)

"Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?"
— Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)

""I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."
"Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.""
— Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)