Jasper Tesla

“Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the "Quixote" and Hamlet a spectator of "Hamlet"?... these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

“Verily I say unto you, the era of the sword and axe is nigh, the era of the wolf’s blizzard. The Time of the White Chill and the White Light is nigh, the Time of Madness and the Time of Contempt: Tedd Deireádh, the Time of End. The world will die amidst frost and be reborn with the new sun. It will be reborn of the Elder Blood, of Hen Ichaer, of the seed that has been sown. A seed which will not sprout but will burst into flame. Ess’tuath esse! Thus it shall be! Watch for the signs! What signs these shall be, I say unto you: first the earth will flow with the blood of Aen Seidhe, the Blood of Elves… Aen Ithlinnespeath, Ithlinne Aegli aep Aevenien’s prophecy”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Blood of Elves

“Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“History is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis...”
― Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious