dangerous at every speed

“Most of these student types are total frauds. They’re scared to death somebody’s gonna find out they don’t know something. They all read the same books and they spout the same slogans, and they love listening to John Coltrane and seeing Pasolini movies. You call that ‘revolution?’… Well, if that’s a revolution, you can stick it. They’d probably shoot me for putting umeboshi in my rice balls, They’d shoot you, too, for understanding the subjunctive…Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’m working class. Revolution or not, the working class will just keep on scraping a living in the same old shitholes. And what is a revolution? It sure as hell isn’t just changing the name on city hall. But those guys don’t know that - those guys with their big words. Tell me, Watanabe, have you ever seen a taxman?”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I'm afraid it sounds very rude, but I hope from the bottom of my heart that I shall never set eyes on any of you again.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognise the trembling of my own heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass - but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache in its path.”
― Haruki Murakami

“This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some greater change, that she did not experience some of those exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is, and when those who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, for something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when the heartstrings, which contentment has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, however rough, even if it should break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty won the right to indulge without let or hindrance in its own desires and woes, would gladly fling the reigns into the hands of imperious circumstance, however cruel.”
― Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past