"Come friends, it's not too late to seek a newer world."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"Be near me when my light is low,
When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick
And tingle; and the heart is sick,
And all the wheels of Being slow.

Be near me when the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust;
And Time, a maniac scattering dust,
And Life, a fury slinging flame.

Be near me when my faith is dry,
And men the flies of latter spring,
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing
And weave their petty cells and die.

Be near me when I fade away,
To point the term of human strife,
And on the low dark verge of life
The twilight of eternal day."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson (In Memoriam)

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

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

"Anytime I see something screech across a room and latch onto someone's neck, and the guy screams and tries to get it off, I have to laugh, because what IS that thing?!"
— Jack Handey

"Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny."
— Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts)

"To me, clowns aren't funny. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad."
— Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts)

"If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy."
— Jack Handey

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know."
— Bill Watterson (The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes)

"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking: True Stories)

"Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters."
— Neil Gaiman

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."
— Neil Gaiman

"Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you."
— Neil Gaiman

"He had come so far from himself that I don't
think he knew who he was anymore."
— Hunter S. Thompson (The Rum Diary: A Novel)

"For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?"
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Prophet)

"I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us"
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Madman)

"I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind. I should not be ungrateful to these teachers."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?"
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that."
— Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories)

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."
— Haruki Murakami (Hear the Wind Sing)

"The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time."
— Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)

"Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time."
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

"It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
— John Steinbeck (Cannery Row)

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself."
— John Steinbeck

"All great and precious things are lonely."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."
— John Steinbeck

"It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth."
— John Steinbeck

"When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate."
— John Steinbeck

"I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!"
— Charles Bukowski

"I'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does."
— Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)

"My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues."
— Kahlil Gibrán (Sand and Foam)

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. "
— Kahlil Gibrán

"There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds."
— Alfred Lord Tennyson

"I stopped looking for a Dream Girl, I just wanted one that wasn't a nightmare."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race. There, I feel better."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. "
— Charles Bukowski

"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting"
— Charles Bukowski

"Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire.... Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It's real. And to anybody watching, you look foolish. Like you've suddenly become an idiot. There's no cure for it unless you know somebody who understands how you feel, and knows how to help."
— Charles Bukowski

"There's nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man
stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will.
Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer
he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising
water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh
as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire
the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter,
you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide.
I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"..few writers like other writers' works. The only time they like them is when they are dead or if they have been for a long time. Writers only like to sniff their own turds. I am one of those. I don't even like to talk to writers, look at them or worse, listen to them. And the worst is to drink with them, they slobber all over themselves, really look piteous, look like they are searching for the wing of the mother.
I'd rather think about death than about other writers. Far more pleasant."
— Charles Bukowski (The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken over the Ship)

"so it's always a process of letting go, one way or another"
— Charles Bukowski (The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966)