Kaz > Kaz's Quotes

“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“God made food; the devil the cooks.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.”
― Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“To love is to suffer and there can be no love otherwise.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation...
...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I tell you solemnly, that I have many times tried to become an insect. But I was not equal even to that. I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness- a real thorough-going illness.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“in despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell
by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy,
insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“Hip - Someone who knows the score. Someone who understands "jive talk." Someone who is "with it." The expression is not subject to definition because, if you don't "dig" what it means, no one can ever tell you.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“I liked, as I like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unawares. What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do god and devil combine to form a live dog?”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Despair

“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
― Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf