"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
— Marcel Proust

"Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind."
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)

"It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids."
— Hunter S. Thompson

"A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman."
— Tom Wolfe

"“But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.”"
— Arthur Rimbaud

"In the 18th century we knew how everything was done, but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in America, I see men flying- but how is it done? I can't even begin to wonder. So my belief in magic returns."
— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

"In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go."
— Patti Smith (Early Work 1970-1979)

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. "
— Umberto Eco

"Darashikoh was inside, for all the world a tastefully dressed patron of the shop, but he carried death in his undershorts and hunger in his heart. "
— Mohsin Hamid

"A lot of people refuse to do things because they don't want to go naked, don't want to go without guarantee. But that's what's got to happen. You go naked until you die"
— Nikki Giovanni

"La vie? Un rien l'amène, un rien l'anime, un rien la mine, un rien l'emmène."
— Raymond Queneau

"In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe."
— Roland Barthes