Daniel

“Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."

"Yes, sir," Andrews said.

"Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old."

"No," Andrews said. A vague terror crept from the darkness that surrounded them, and tightened his voice. "That's not the way it is."

"You ain't learned, then," McDonald said. "You ain't learned yet. . . .”
― John Williams, Butcher's Crossing

“Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.”
― William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

“No one ever likes the right person.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction