Iulian

“Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even though a high price may be paid in terms of insecurity, sensitivity, and defenselessness for the gift of the “divine madness,” to borrow the term used by the classical Greeks. They do not run away from non-being, but by encountering and wrestling with it, force it to produce being. They knock on silence for an answering music; they pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.”
― Rollo May, The Courage to Create

“Vague, foolish sorrow stops at the door of my soul, stares at me awhile, and moves on, he murmured, smiling to himself. A man must read widely, a little of everything or whatever he can, but given the shortness of life and the verbosity of the world, not too much should be demanded of him.”
― José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

“Yet man is born to love. He is compassionate, just and good. He sheds tears for others and such tears give him pleasure. He invents stories to make him weep. Whence then this furious desire for wars and slaughter? Why does man plunge into the abyss, embracing with passion that which inspires him with such loathing? Why do men who revolt over such trivial issues as attempts to change the calendar allow themselves to be sent like obedient animals to kill and be killed?”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity

“Society is the choice between freedom on someone else’s terms and slavery on yours.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky