John M. Dow

“Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

“But worst of all is the freckled girl. A Cancer. A harbinger of death. Dark green clouds of disease spew from her hands. With one breath, the soldiers’ bodies seize.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“The suffering faces of depleted men and women reached across to them, pleading not so much for help – they were beyond that – but for an explanation. Just something to subdue this confusion.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace—those qualities you find always in that which the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, in the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush or the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move toward death.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune