Epigraph Quotes

“If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
― Juan Ramón Jiménez, Invisible Reality

“Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.”
― Steven Erikson, Gardens of the Moon

“The joyful will stoop with sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.”
― Paul Valéry, Selected Writings

“The sun is high and I’m surrounded by sand.
For as far as my eyes can see
I’m strapped into a rocking chair
With a blanket over my knees
I am a stranger to myself
And nobody knows I’m here
When I looked into my face
It wasn’t myself I’d seen
But who I’ve tried to be.
I’m thinking of things I’d hoped to forget.
I’m choking to death in a sun that never sets.
I clugged up my mind with perpetual grief
And turned all my friends into enemies
And now that past has returned to haunt me.

I’M SCARED OF GOD AND SCARED OF HELL
AND I’M CAVING IN UPON MYSELF
HOW CAN ANYONE KNOW ME
WHEN I DON’T EVEN KNOW MYSELF”
― José Ángel Mañas

“One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.”
― James Salter, Light Years

“In memory of Terry Pratchett,
who showed us all how it’s done”
― Charles Stross, The Nightmare Stacks

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
― Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.”
― Philip K. Dick, We Can Build You

“Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, Volume 2: Purgatorio

“They say life is full of surprises. That our dreams really can come true. Then again, so can our nightmares ...”
― Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, Ace of Spades

“It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to correct it, and were to say, "No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against thee, that thou art a very poor writer.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Let freedom ring / let the white dove sing / let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning.

As epigraph to Part III, quoting lyrics, Gretchen Peters, "Independence Day”
― Don Winslow, The Force

“I didn’t have a good idea, but I had an idea. Which would be a fitting quote on my tombstone.”
― B.C. Johnson

“There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people all it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree that struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . Survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.”
― Betty Smith

“. . . his hand did quake,
And tremble like a leafe of Aspin greene,
And troubled blood through his pale face was seene
To come, and goe with tidings from the heart,
As it a ronning messenger had beene.”
― Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene

“Receive what this great cornucopia has offered,
Behold a useful and profitable book. If you think otherwise,
Do not lay the blame on the book, but on yourself.”
― Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream

“He was hounded by the shade of his brother, demanding terribly the price of blood... William of Malmesbury, the History of the English Kings.”
― Patricia Bracewell, The Price of Blood