Shawn Alff

“Love knows no virtue, no merit; it loves and forgives and tolerates everything because it must. We are not guided by reason...”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Why become well-versed in science and the arts if not to impress a lovely little woman?”
― Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs