Ari

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of human-kind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I am a phantom built out of pain. Whenever I find it hard to know what to do with myself, I imagine I have a zip fastener in my belly, from my neck to my groin, and that I'm slowly undoing it, from top to bottom. And then I pull my arms out of my arms, my legs out of my legs, and take my head off in my head. As I extract myself from my own body, it falls off me like old clothes. Underneath them, I am finer, soft, almost transparent. I have a body like a Jellyfish, white, milky, phosphorescent. This fantasy is the only thing capable of bringing me relief. Oh yes, then I am free.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“He stooped to the evil of hypocrisy with others, sceptical of their innocence which he could cajole so easily.”
― James Joyce, A Portait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Though a little frightened, she let him have his way, and the reckless, shameless sensuality shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last, and made a different woman of her. It was not really love. It was not voluptuousness. It was sensuality sharp and searing as fire, burning the soul to tinder. Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places. It cost her an effort to let him have his way and his will of her. She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave. Yet the passion licked around her, consuming, and when the sensual flame of it pressed through her bowels and breast, she really thought she was dying: yet a poignant, marvellous death.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover