"ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars"
— Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers)

"God, let me remember all good losers."
— Carl Sandburg

"All losers are romantics. It's what keeps us from blowing our brains out."
— Richard Kadrey (Butcher Bird: A Novel Of The Dominion)

"We were always loyal to lost causes...Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. ~ Professor MacHugh"
— James Joyce (Ulysses)

"and in that single moment she felt as though she had seen into his soul and the very heart of the the love he bore for her and their children"
— Catrin Collier

"Secret kabals of vegetarians habitually gather under the sign to exchange contraband from beyond the Vegetable Barrier. In their pinpoint eyes dances their old dream: the Total Fast. One of them reports a new atrocity published without compassionate comment by the editors of Scientific American: "It has been established that, when pulled from the ground, a radish produces an electronic scream." Not even the triple bill for 65˘ will comfort them tonight. With a mad laugh born of despair, one of them throws himself on a hot-dog stand, disintegrating on the first chew into pathetic withdrawal symptoms. The rest watch him mournfully and then separate into the Montreal entertainment section. The news is more serious than any of them thought. One is ravished by a steak house with sidewalk ventilation. In a restaurant, one argues with the waiter that he ordered "tomato" but then in a suicide of gallantry he agrees to accept the spaghetti, meat sauce mistake."
— Leonard Cohen