Will

“The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.”
― Dan Simmons, Endymion

“The Song of Kali is with us. It has been with us for a very long time. Its chorus grows and grows and grows. But there are other voices to be heard. There are other songs to be sung.”
― Dan Simmons, Song of Kali

“Francis Crozier believes in nothing. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities. Nothing he has learned in the past six months has persuaded him otherwise.

Has it?”
― Dan Simmons, The Terror

“Joey laid his head on his arms and wept. What seemed trivial to others is the pure essence of Hell to the sufferer, and the incubus of realised cowardice is the worst that haunts manhood.

From that orgy of weakness and tears, Joey Donory rose with an iron resolve crystallising in his liquor-muddled brain. He had reached the state in which even the most trivial discomforts loom monstrously and deathly portent. And Joey's troubles were not trivial.”
― Robert E. Howard, Western Tales