"I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit . . . If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it—you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world."
— Harry Crews (Getting Naked With Harry Crews: Interviews)

"In this treacherous world
Nothing is the truth nor a lie.
Everything depends on the color
Of the crystal through which one sees it"
— Pedro Calderón de la Barca

"(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute"
— Bruce Sterling (Schismatrix)

"Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear."
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"Questions of absolute good and evil are much better not opened to public debate these days, when so few people are sure of their absolutes"
— Sidney Howard

"The public, which has been wrong before and is wrong now, can accept only demons and angels on the stage"
— Theophille Gautier

"We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires"
— Alfred de Vigny (Stello)