Cameron Meisel

“But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“All my life I have been a poor go-to-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanour, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“I gave up on everything in my life, including escaping my misery through my school-work.”
― Dave Pelzer, A Child Called "It"

“He shoved her aside and forced his sword, to the hilt, straight through James’s torso.”
― Gabriel F.W. Koch, Steel Blood