Jim

“Sovereign power is nothing if it does not care for the welfare of others, and . . . it is the task of a good ruler to keep his power in check, to resist the passions of unbridled desire and implacable rage, and to realize that, as the dictator Caesar used to say, the recollection of past cruelty is a wretched provision for old age.”
― Ammianus Marcellinus, The Later Roman Empire

“A reader of mine is a deluxe reader, not because I’m so great but because in order to get to me you have to take a path through literature, not through some books bought out of curiosity at the bookstore. A reader of mine has to have read other things.”
― César Aira

“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“What matters is at the end of life, when you're about to pass into oblivion, that you've at least scratched 'Kilroy was here,' on the last wall of the universe.”
― William Faulkner, Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner, 1926-1962