Luiz

“Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, “the more masters will he have to serve.”
― William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully,”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Classic Work On How To Achieve Happiness: The Psychology of Happiness

“I sipped the coffee and lit a cigarette. I can't say that I enjoyed the taste of coffee or the feeling of smoke descending into my lungs, I could barely distinguish the two, the point was to do it, it was a routine, and as with all routines, protocol was everything.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage