Ben Slater

“I am a dumb piece of meat
and I rot everyday
my flesh gives a rotting smell
and people say it's the smell of life
and they come to me
and watch me rot
and get happy and upset and annoyed and disgusted and maybe sometimes feel
compassion
but they don't realize they are rotting too.”
― Daul Kim

“The color scheme of the whole sanatorium seemed to be based on liver. Dark, glowering woodwork, burnt-brown leather chairs, walls that might once have been white but had succumbed under a spreading malady of mod or damp. A mottled brown linoleum sealed off the floor.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The fortune-teller was silent. The girl felt a chill drift over her. Her body broke out in chicken-skin and she huddled lower, trying to get away from that dark touch of fear. The candle flame lashed.

Then, as if from a distance, she heard the fortune-teller say: "Nothing."

The girl felt a dull, deep pain. That was the seed within her, her fate, and she realized she had known it all along.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World