Haley

“The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.”
― Paul Auster, Timbuktu

“Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?

It must be that they believe in their night vision.
They believe themselves able to draw images up out of the dark.

But black wells only yield black water.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you live? How can you love?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I've read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you cry, and so does a doorknob.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching