Michael Norton

“These are the oldest memories on earth, the time codes carried in every chromosome and gene. Every step we’ve taken in our evolution is a milestone inscribed with organic memories. From the enzymes controlling the carbon-dioxide cycle, to the organization of the brachial plexus and the nerve pathways of the pyramid cells of the mid-brain. Each is a record of a thousand decisions taken in a chemical crisis. Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World

“and when he saw the kid standing there looking looking down at him he held out to him his bloodied hands as if in accusation and then clapped them to his ears and cried out what it seemed he himself would not hear, a howl of such outrage as to stitch a caesura in the pulsebeat of the world.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“The most important questions are the ones we can't hope to answer with words. Words are like toys : they amuse and educate us for a time, but when we come to manhood, we should give them up.'
Sunmer shakes his head.
' The words are all we have,' he says.' If we give them up, we are no better than the beasts.'
Otto smiles at Sunmer's wrong headedness.
' Then you must find out the explanations on your own, if that is what you truly think.”
― Ian McGuire , The North Water