Troy Manigault

“If I had kept a journal, I could go back through it and check up on what memory reports plausibly but not necessarily truly. But keeping a journal then would have been like making notes while going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Eventless as our life was, it swept us along. Were we any less a Now Generation that the one that presently claims the title? I wonder. And it may be just as well that I have no diary to remember by. Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn't struck you.”
― Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety

“I don't believe there is any such definition, there is no such thing as evil, only moral judgments based on what society believes to be wrong behavior.”
― Nikolas Schreck

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“I'm me," she whispered. "Me"
Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.
"I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me."
Every time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut.
"Me," she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, "I want... I want to be... wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula