Michael Cole

“I never exchanged a word with the Colonel. He has no significance at all in what happened during my stay in Oxgodby. As far as I’m concerned he might just as well have gone round the corner and died. But that goes for most of us, doesn’t it? We look blankly at each other. Here I am, here you are. What are we doing here? What do you suppose it’s all about? Let’s dream on. Yes, that’s my Dad and Mum over there on the piano top. My eldest boy is on the mantelpiece. That cushion cover was embroidered by my cousin Sarah only a month before she passed on. I go to work at eight and come home at five-thirty. When I retire they’ll give me a clock – with my name engraved on the back. Now you know all about me. Go away: I’ve forgotten you already.”
― J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

“SEA CHANTY
I'm the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody fucks
with me--
And those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath
the sea.
And the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes,
Singing, "Fuck ye not with Gory Gnahb and her desperate
enterprise!"
I'll tangle with a battleship, I'll massacre a sloop,
I've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop--
I've seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries,
"Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnahb, and her desperate
enterprise!”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,' said he [Holmes], 'but it is a common lot this morning. Mrs Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

“In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control, even over his own will. Man takes up the sword in order to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in some far-off time beyond perception.”
― Kentaro Miura, Berserk, Vol. 1