Xing

“The monsters are real, but they aren’t here now. You’re safe.”
― Jordan L. Hawk, Widdershins

“We have to realize what we are. The range of what is human is vast, ranging from the saintly to the monstrous. When we speak of other human beings as if they somehow do not belong to our species, we ignore the reality of our very nature.”
― Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day

“He saw life, in that instant, as a series of borrowings. You slopped together a brain from atomic mud, your cells clustered together and built you a frame, and you grew layers of flesh and draped it over your bones. You took vibrations from the air and made a voice; you drew light through your eyes and the world appeared like projector thrusting an image onto a dark screen. You learned rules, and your feelings shaped themselves into something beyond your control, a weapon you had to master if you had hoped to destroy anything specific.”
― J.A. Rock, The Grand Ballast

“If only he had figured this trick out sooner. It would have saved him so much pain. If only he hadn’t been so terrified of this dead darkness. But it was nothing. Not pain, not fear. Nothing. This, absence and silence, seemed to stretch out forever and through all time. It devoured his future and past, engulfed his present, and absolved all with an endless, soothing darkness.”
― Ginn Hale, Black Blades