Go Ask Jordan, I Think She'll Know

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
― Oscar Wilde

“She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.”
― Raymond Chandler

“There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.”
― Upton Sinclair, The Jungle