"That which exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else."
— Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men)

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

What are we holding onto, Sam?

That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for

(From The Lord of the Rings screenplay by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens; incorrectly attributed to JRR Tolkien)"
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"I wish the ring had never come to me.I wish none of this had happened."-Frodo
Gandalf-"So do all who see such times,but it's not for them to decide.All we have to decide is what to do with the time that's given to us. "
— J.R.R. Tolkien

"Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. "
— William Shakespeare

"Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires."
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

""What's done is done""
— Macbeth

"The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down." -The Judge"
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"...I've committed to nothing...and that's just suicide...by tiny, tiny increments."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

"I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)