". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."
— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
— Joseph Conrad (Under Western Eyes)

"If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!"
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Without God all things are permitted."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."
— Albert Camus

"we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men."
— Joseph Conrad

"You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against the culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Not everything is about money. You didn't even say, hello. You are not your sad little wallet."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don't need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don't really need."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"Appealing to our subconscious emotions rather than our conscious intellects, advertisements are designed to exploit the discontentments fostered by the American dream, the constant desire for social success and the material rewards that accompany it."
— Sonia Maasik (Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers)

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
— Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"Here was a new generation, a new generation dedicated more than the last one to the fear of poverty and the worship of success, grown up to find all gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths to man shaken."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)

"The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet."
— William Gibson

"To live without hope is to cease to live."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that is wants to live humbly for one.

Quoted in J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" "
— Wilhelm Stekel

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"The only way to stop envying others is to have a self of joy. All creation is jammed in the self soul. "
— Slyvia Plath

""And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.""
— Sylvia Plath