Richard > Richard's Quotes

“With the sound of gusting wind in the branches of the language trees of Babel, the words gave way like leaves, and every reader glimpsed another reality hidden in the foilage.”
― Andrei Codrescu, The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess

“I do all this alone, everything I achieve, I achieve alone, because it's my head I'm locked into, and I share this space with nobody but myself.”
― Alex Garland, The Coma

“You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That'€™s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world.”
― Octave Mirbeau

“I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
― Jimi Hendrix, The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis: Bold as Love | Guitar TAB Sheet Music Collection | Note-for-Note Transcriptions for Electric Guitar Players | Classic Psychedelic Rock Solos

“...though I am still...exceedingly puzzled as to why our murderer should decide to draw almost inevitable attention to himself by wearing such a conspicuous pair of plimsolls and running around Burford for two and a half hours.”
― Colin Dexter , The Remorseful Day

“If you're sad today, just remember the world is over 4 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”
― Simon Pegg

“Our torments also may in length of time
Become our Elements.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“If you'd take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can't say. But it might.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“Oh, most unhappy man,' he cried, 'try to be happy! You have red hair like your sister.'
My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world,' said Gregory.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

“I wanted to rub the human race in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

“America Is A Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.”
― Brian Bilston

“Good evening? “Good evening,” he says!’ His face contorted into a puckered grin of nastiness. ‘Let me tell you something, Pip Bin, your good evenings will not last if I have my way. One day soon I shall greet you by saying, “Bad evening,” and you will have no choice but to sadly shake your head and say, “Yes, yes, it is a bad evening, they all are now.” Ha, ha, ha!”
― Mark Evans, Bleak Expectations

“There is eloquence in screaming.”
― Patrick Jones

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“- Why me?
- That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
- Yes.
- Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Everything is nothing, with a twist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“So It Goes”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“How’s the patient?” asked Derby.
“Dead to the world.”
“But not actually dead.”
“No.”
“How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Goodness me, the clock has struck-
Alackday, and fuck my luck.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I did not die, and yet I lost life’s breath”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“CHORONZON: I am a dire wolf, prey-stalking, lethal prowler.

MORPHEUS: I am a hunter, horse-mounted, wolf-stabbing.

CHORONZON: I am a horsefly, horse-stinging, hunter-throwing.

MORPHEUS: I am a spider, fly-consuming, eight legged.

CHORONZON: I am a snake, spider-devouring, posion-toothed.

MORPHEUS: I am an ox, snake-crushing, heavy-footed.

CHORONZON: I am an anthrax, butcher bacterium, warm-life destroying.

MORPHEUS: I am a world, space-floating, life-nurturing.

CHORONZON: I am a nova, all-exploding... planet-cremating.

MORPHEUS: I am the Universe -- all things encompassing, all life embracing.

CHORONZON: I am Anti-Life, the Beast of Judgment. I am the dark at the end of everything. The end of universes, gods, worlds... of everything. Sss. And what will you be then, Dreamlord?

MORPHEUS: I am hope.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes