Phanindra

“It's not true that you were the good child. Not a good child at all. You were scared of rejection, so you made yourself a convenient child for your parents to have around."

"And your good parents - well, that is a lie as well. Not good parents at all, always looking over their shoulders, afraid of what people might be saying behind their backs. You think that liars who flock together never betray each other? Oh, you will betray your parents. And your parents will betray you. It is the way of all flesh. We tell each other our lies and the betrayed betrays the betrayer.”
― Fuyumi Ono, The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow

“see with nobody's eyes, we hear with nobody's ears, we feel with nobody's hearts, but our own.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“To Taoism that which is absolutely still or absolutely perfect is absolutely dead, for without the possibility of growth and change there can be no Tao. In reality there is nothing in the universe which is completely perfect or completely still; it is only in the minds of men that such concepts exist.”
― Alan Watts

“The moment a gentleman perfects an invention and petitions the government for aid, he ceases to be an innocent citizen and becomes a culprit, a man to be shirked, browbeaten, and sneered at. I have never heard of any mechanician, inventor, or natural scientist who failed to find the government all but inaccessible, and whom the government did not discourage and treat badly.”
― Jennifer Chiaverini, Enchantress of Numbers