Brian > Brian's Quotes

“It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Evelyn said, "What's it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?"
Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. "Love," she said at length. She swallowed. "It's a madness. It's bad.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”
― Stephen King, The Stand

“That... is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Holly sighs. “I’m out of cigarettes, too.” “Those things will kill you,” Jerome says. She gives him a flat look. “Yes! That’s part of their charm.”
― Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes

“You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”
― Joe Hill, Horns

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“Was there any human urge more pitiful-or more intense- than wanting another chance at something?”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced. Safety and the assurance of safety are things of the past. Whilst I live on here there is but one thing to hope for, that I may not go mad, if, indeed, I be not mad already. If I be sane, then surely it is maddening to think that of all the foul things that lurk in this hateful place.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Think of your head as an unsafe neighborhood; don't go there alone.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“Thus, the great paradox of a highly punitive approach to crime control is that it winds up criminalizing so much of daily life as to foster widespread illegality as people work to circumvent it. Intensive policing and the crime it intends to control become mutually reinforcing. The extent to which crime elicits harsh policing, or policing itself contributes to a climate of violence and illegality, becomes impossible to sort out.”
― Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City

“I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter.”
― Maya Deren

“How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of "green"?”
― Stan Brakhage

“Art is a sense of magic.”
― Stan Brakhage

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

“There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing on the Doorstep

“Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction”
― Dalai Lama XIV

“All time is time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“There was a muffled pop, the sound of a small pumpkin exploding in a microwave oven.
Morris cut the wheel to the left and there was another bump as the Biscayne went back into the parking area. He looked in the mirror and saw that Curtis's head was gone.
Well, no. Not exactly. It was there, but all spread out. Mooshed. No loss of talent in that mess. Morrie thought.”
― Stephen King, Finders Keepers

“I will try not to overlook the cruelties that victims inflict on one another as they are jammed together in the boxcars of the system. I don’t want to romanticize them. But I do remember (in rough paraphrase) a statement I once read: “The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless "reforms" that changed little. Dostoevski once said: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals the fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such as world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Being oppressed means the absence of choices”
― bell hooks