Arianna

“Have read little and understood less.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only without the trimmings. I didn't go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment. I didn't borrow designs to hide my creative impotence--I created nothing. I didn't say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind--I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death--I've imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you--you haven't done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You've spared them the blank death. Because you've imposed it--on yourself.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

“It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn.”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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