C.C. > C.C.'s Quotes

“We seek the safety of isolation even as it kills us.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Everything gets horrible. Everything you see gets ugly. Lurid is the word. Doctor Garton said lurid, one time. That's the right word for it. And everything sounds harsh, spiny and harsh sounding, like every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth. And smelling like I smell bad even after I just got out of the shower. It's like what's the point of washing if everything smells like I need another shower”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“There's only two ways to be completely alone in this world, lost in a crowd or in total isolation...”
― Jeff Lemire, Essex County, Vol. 2: Ghost Stories

“Idealists can be quite a problem when they get disgusted with themselves.”
― J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes

“This fall I think you're riding for—it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J. D. Salinger

“Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.”
― J.G. Ballard

“If you’re subjected to enough great salesmen and salespitches and marketing concepts for long enough—like from your earliest Saturday-morning cartoons, let’s say—it is only a matter of time before you start believing deep down that everything is sales and marketing, and that whenever somebody seems like they care about you or about some noble idea or cause, that person is really a salesman and really ultimately doesn’t give a shit about you or some cause but really just wants something for himself.”
― David Foster Wallace

“I made a circular motion with my finger around my temple to indicate I thought this guy was crazy, forgetting that there was no one in the room to see this circular motion except him. He saw it and frowned.”
― John Swartzwelder, The Time Machine Did It

“We seem to face an enemy who, no matter how many times we win, will best us in the end. He has so many allies: time, disease, boredom, stupidity, religious quackery, and bad habits.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“The next day, a dead turtle was left on my doorstep as a warning. I couldn’t figure out as a warning for what, and I guess whoever was watching me picked up on that, because the next morning there was another dead turtle, but this one had several sheets of paper glued to it’s back leg. The pieces of paper contained a long footnoted explanation of all the symbolism involved. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The turtle was the “turtle of inquisitiveness” and the cheese smeared on it’s shell meant something, and the little cowboy boots on its feet meant something. Everything about this animal meant something apparently to whoever sent it. I still didn’t get what it was all about. The next morning there was no turtle. Somebody just shot at me from the bushes.”
― John Swartzwelder, The Time Machine Did It

“This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Tv’s “real” agenda is to be “liked,” because if you like what you’re seeing, you’ll stay tuned. tv is completely unabashed about this; it’s its sole raison.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Every hour wounds. The last one kills.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“I know it's crooked, but it's the only game in town.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
― David Foster Wallace

“No man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.”
― G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

“Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.”
― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”
― mao tse-tung

“I survive at the edge of friends circles.”
― Holly Black, Red Glove

“I remember … I remember asking a wise man, once … though whether it was last year or a thousand years ago I cannot tell. I asked him, ‘Why do Men fear the dark?’ I could tell he thought the question wise, though I felt no wisdom in asking it. ‘Because darkness,’ he told me, ‘is ignorance made visible.’ ‘And do Men despise ignorance?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they prize it above all things—all things!—but only so long as it remains invisible.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye

“Sometimes light illuminates things that are better left in the dark.”
― Roshani Chokshi, Aru Shah and the End of Time