Exurb1a > Quotes

“No one is guaranteed happiness. It's not a human right. It's a house you have to build yourself. Your family and friends can help, but they're all busy building their own houses too. You're just bitter because you built a shit house.”
― Exurb1a, The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

“Hell isn't a fire pit but a museum of regrets.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“There's no grand plan and no one's in charge. It's all just fumbling about in the dark, and half the time you're not even sure why you're fumbling. You're so desperate for something to pin your peace of mind to that you'll do all sorts of stupid things in its name. You don't mean to break up a marriage, but if breaking it up might let you sleep like a normal person again, suddenly you start considering it. You don't mean to become a drunk, but if drink is the only way you can keep a handle on some tiny compartment of your life then it's straight for the bottle.”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“I fear that on my last day, on my deathbed, that is when the meaning of things will enter the room and kiss my forehead and whisper into my ear what it was I should have done with my life, and how I should've conducted myself. Hell isn't a fire pit but a museum of regrets.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“It's funny, you don't convince the living to behave in a proper way; you just wait for them to die and hope their children grow up a little kinder and wiser than their parents.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“In the beginning there was Nothing but Nothing is unstable so Something came about.”
― Exurb1a, The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

“There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, in a potentially infinite and apparently dead universe, and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on. Well it fucking is. And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever.”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“Most humans were not malicious, only drastically misguided and desperate in their loneliness. They learned at some point that there was an eccentric core to their personality and that it was possible no one else shared their own brand of eccentricity. They put up screens around that core to shield from embarrassment and shame. For all the pompous forms in which writers and musicians have described it, love was surely that moment when the screens might come down in front of another human, if only for a moment, and freely give them a long, unfettered look into the true middle where the fear and anguish lives.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“There is evil in the world, yet God claims he loves us. If he could remove that evil but chooses not to, then he is not all-loving as we're told he is. If he wants to remove that evil from the world but cannot, then why do we call him all-powerful? In any case, he's not truly God and there's nothing to be frightened of. Chin up.” “Goodnight”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they’ll never sit in.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“What a lovely thing utopia is when you were too young to remember the horror that came with it.”
― Exurb1a, Logic Beach: Part I

“Happy people are just people you aren't acquainted enough with yet to know how miserable they really are.”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“If I was in hell, would I know?”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“Don't be so foolish to believe empires are built on stone. They're on bamboo stilts at best.”
― Exurb1a, The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

“With the right ears even a lesser creature can hear the song. It is sung constantly, from the heart of each atom and star. The galaxies hum of shape and form in their essence. That is their secret. The particles whisper of the nature of proper interactions. That is their game. And during a storm, in the forest, on the right night, it is no secret that the leaves all sing of God.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“Inaction is the primary refuge of those who prefer their own constructed realities to the beautiful chaos of the real world.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“Let them be brave, the old man thought, a prayer to no one in particular – whoever they are, my great grandchildren – let them be brave so they might look back upon this planet from a distant star one day and have forged their own, better place. Let them be brave so they might choose Compassion over Stupidity each and every time. Let their genes hum with the Insatiable Need to Know That Which They Don't Know Yet. God, let them be better than us at the very least.”
― Exurb1a, The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

“It's fun to think that one day our great, great grandchildren may get that much closer to understanding what the hell creation is doing here in the first place, and glimpsing the underlying structure and nature of matter itself. Hopefully they won't live with the same existential horrors we all quietly face today in our own lives. 
 
There is a kind of bravery to our condition, I reckon: brought into being without an explanation, in a potentially infinite and apparently dead universe, and expected to just get on with it as though nothing strange is going on. Well it fucking is. And it's all right to have a meltdown about the whole affair from time to time, faced with the pressures of modern existence, trying to be a good human and a good worker and a good son/daughter/parent, trying to be a good citizen, trying to be wise without condescension but uninhibited without recklessness, trying to just muddle through without making any silly decisions, trying to align with the correct political opinions, trying to stay thin, trying to be attractive, trying to be smart, trying to find the ideal partner, trying to stay financially secure, trying to just find some modest corner of meaning and belonging and sanity to go and sit in, and all the while living on the edge of dying forever. 
 
We're all in the same strange boat, grappling with the same strange condition. But it isn't quite so scary if we all do it together. So let's do it together.”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk

“If philosophers gave clear answers then surely the whole field would've died out with the Greeks.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“Humans are the only animals that build zoos for themselves.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“The true horror of existence is not the certainty of death, nor the threat of hell, but the knowledge that we will likely go our entire lives as impossibly complex machines, walking about in an impossibly complex universe, and never truly discover what it was all for. I don’t know is brave. I’ll never know is heroic.”
― Exurb1a, Geometry for Ocelots

“Also: Never buy cheap socks. Dance when you can. You’ll know when you’re in love. If you have to check, you’re not.”
― Exurb1a, Geometry for Ocelots

“However we feel about this, Arcadia was built with pure autonomy in mind. Autonomy is only true autonomy when you allow others to go in directions you don’t condone. All else is just ethical masturbation.”
― Exurb1a, Logic Beach: Part I

“If I asked you in the midst of a tragedy, “Shall I end your suffering and make all well again?” you would answer, “Please do, I beg it.” If instead I asked you after the tragedy, “Are you glad you lived through it? Did you grow wiser from the experience?” you would answer, “Yes! Thank you for not stopping the thing prematurely.” Humans are not to be trusted.”
― Exurb1a, Geometry for Ocelots

“Until that hungry black god eats me up. Now I spend the centuries circling into it like a penny in one of those coin spirals at an arcade;”
― Exurb1a, The Bridge to Lucy Dunne

“Beauty is nice and virtue is attractive, but nothing is more gorgeous than meeting another creature who shares your deepest values.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“self-consciousness was the product of a positive feedback loop between perception and reflection, the two eventually amplifying each other into a cycle that occurred so quickly neither could be separated from the other.”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung”
― Exurb1a, The Fifth Science

“But if you think about it long enough, you'll always come around to the same conclusion, I reckon. There's no grand plan and no one's in charge.”
― Exurb1a, The Prince of Milk