Marianna

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Steward, Daughtry.  Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand.  This is real.  I have a heart.  That, sir”—here he waved his extended hand under Daughtry’s nose—“is my hand.  There is only one thing you may do, must do, right now.  You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand.” “But . . . but. . . ” Daughtry faltered. “If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place.  I shall remain here, die here.  I know you are a leper.  You can’t tell me anything about that.  There’s my hand.  Are you going to take it?  My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it.  If you don’t take it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die.  I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman.  I am a friend, a comrade.  I am no poltroon of the flesh.  I live in my heart and in my head, sir—not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit.  Take that hand.  I want to talk with you afterward.”
― Jack London, Michael, Brother of Jerry

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“What it was all about—why he was kept in his cramped prison in the cramped car—he did not ask himself.  He accepted it as unhappiness and misery, and had no more explanation for it than for the crushing of the paw.  Such things happened.  It was life, and life had many evils.  The why of things never entered his head.  He knew things and some small bit of the how of things.  What was, was.  Water was wet, fire hot, iron hard, meat good.  He accepted such things as he accepted the everlasting miracles of the light and of the dark, which were no miracles to him any more than was his wire coat a miracle, or his beating heart, or his thinking brain.”
― Jack London, Michael, Brother of Jerry