Wesley Vangilder > Wesley's Quotes

“The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always decieve ourselves twice about the people we love-first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“Fucking was how babies were made.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“The belief that we somehow moved on to something else - whether still recognisably ourselves, or quite thoroughly changed - might be a tribute to our evolutionary tenacity and our animal thirst for life, but not to our wisdom. That saw a value beyond itself; in intelligence, knowledge and wit as concepts - wherever and by whoever expressed - not just in its own personal manifestation of those qualities, and so could contemplate its own annihilation with equanimity, and suffer it with grace; it was only a sort of sad selfishness that demanded the continuation of the individual spirit in the vanity and frivolity of a heaven.”
― Iain Banks

“Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; that’s the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms? Yes, we’re hedonists, Mr. Bora Horza Gobuchul. We seek pleasure and have fashioned ourselves so that we can take more of it; admitted. We are what we are. But what about you? What does that make you?”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“Special Circumstances had always been the Contact section’s moral espionage weapon, the very cutting edge of the Culture’s interfering diplomatic policy, the elite of the elite, in a society which abhorred elitism. Even before the war, its standing and its image within the Culture had been ambiguous. It was glamorous but dangerous, possessed of an aura of roguish sexiness - there was no other word for it - which implied predation, seduction and even violation…No other part of the Culture more exactly represented what the society as a whole really stood for, or was more militant in the application of he Culture’s fundamental beliefs. Yet no other part embodied less of the society’s day-to-day character.”
― Iain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas

“I am a ghost to this man, I’m thinking. I am something unreal, something not quite tangible, yet still an obstacle of sorts and he nods, gets back on the phone, resumes speaking in a dialect totally alien to me.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“He’s the boy next door, aren’t you honey?” “No I’m not,” I whisper to myself. “I’m a fucking evil psychopath.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I could stay living in this city if they just installed Blaupunkts in the cabs.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“When you think about it, Johnny Appleseed was a fucking ecological terrorist.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“I'm a toxic waste byproduct of God's creation.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I tiger can smile
A snake will say it loves you
Lies make us evil”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“no matter how early you rise or how late you turn in, you never see that point where light begins or the first bruise of darkness bleeds in under its fragile skin; the beauty, and the scary, unfathomable wisdom of transition.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“He's going on and on, and I can't be bothered. I just can't be fuckin well arsed saying something like: Solaris shites all over 2001, and then listening to him arguing vehemently against it. Or, alternatively, waiting for him to say it, and then being expected to argue engingly, as if to agree, even if we do, is a sign that we're effete proofs. I can't be bothered with it and I can't even be bothered to tell him that I can'be be bothered.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“- Ah nivir bother asking ma father who ah kin shag, ah idly observe.
- Glad tae hear it, Sylvia says in clipped tones as Ali stifles a giggle.
- Me neither... groans Matty, -...unless it's muh ma.
- That's only good manners, ah shrugs.”
― Irvine Welsh, Skagboys

“... ona aşktan söz ettim. o ise aşkın din gibi bir şey olduğunu, aslında var olmadığı halde sistemin bizi daha kolay kullanmak için uydurduğu bir şey olduğunu söyledi.”
― Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting

“Scott's mind was racing, struggling to comprehend the events unfolding around him. They were talking about disposing of Twinkle like he was a rusty old bike that no-one rode anymore.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“A shaft of moonlight illuminated a row of sentinel silver birch in a phosphorescent glow, appearing almost ethereal in the relative surrounding gloom. Boris had stopped again, his silhouette a stark black juxtaposition against the background of illuminated branches.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“The city centre was still crawling with Christmas shoppers looking to add to their already burgeoning piles of gifts. To Scott they were like ants at a picnic, teeming from store to store, trailing oversized carrier bags and infants behind them as they went. Scott felt alien in this environment; pulling up his hood he hurried through the crowds, dodging pushchairs, lit cigarettes and charity collection tins.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time - Now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly, I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones, and that the oomny ones use like, inspiration and what Bog sends. Now it was lovely music that came into my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on, and I viddied right at once what to do.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Literature is the aesthetic exploitation of language”
― Anthony Burgess, A Mouthful of Air: Languages and Language, Especially English

“Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.”
― Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers

“I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, his first name. Eighteen was not all that young an age then. But what was I going to do?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Quizás el hombre que elige el mal es en cierto modo mejor que aquel a quien se le impone el bien,”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Representative democracy had been replaced by the surveillance camera and the private police force.”
― J G Ballard