Samuel Ayers

“It is quite possible that the pact that some say exists between god and men contains only two articles, namely, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
― José Saramago, Cain

“Only through imitation do we develop toward originality”
― John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America

“I wondered how in hell I’d got myself mixed up in a project that couldn’t be carried out. It was like starting to write a novel. When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of ever finishing.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America

“Real Japanese sword fights often ended after a very brief struggle lasting no more than half a second to two seconds. By the time the swords had clashed but once, one side had already fallen in a pool of blood. But before this moment, the opponents stared at each other like statues, sometimes for as long as ten minutes. During this contest, the swordsman’s weapon wasn’t held by the hands, but by his heart. The heart-sword, transformed through the eyes into the gaze, stabbed into the depths of the enemy’s soul. The real winner was determined during this process: In the silence suspended between the two swordsmen, the blades of their spirits parried and stabbed as soundless claps of thunder. Before a single blow was struck, victory, defeat, life, and death had already been decided.”
― Liu Cixin, Remembrance of Earth's Past: The Three-Body Trilogy