Nicholas Sim

“But I can see what has ensued. A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.” He paused for a long moment; then he smiled slightly. “The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“The dying are selfish, he thought; they want their moments to themselves, like children.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“What can I expect here? You know the fairy tale about the man who died, don’t you? He was waiting in Eternity to find out what the Lord had decided to do with him. He waited and waited, for one year, ten years, a hundred years. He begged and pleaded for a decision. Finally he couldn’t bear the waiting any longer. Then they said to him: ‘What do you think you’re waiting for? You’ve been in Hell for a long time already.”
― Anna Seghers, Transit

“Stop agreeing with everything I say! It's not as if you're going to solve everything by admitting your mistakes. Whether or not you admit then or not, mistakes are mistakes."
"It's true," I said. It -was- true.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle