Luke Pajowski

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.”
― Harry Crews

“Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever really did.”
― Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

“In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.”
― Dennis Lehane