Alex

“Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

“The thing I’m most afraid of is me. Of not knowing what I’m going to do. Of not knowing what I’m doing right now”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.”
She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly.
And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.”
“Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’—unacceptable?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean—the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to—curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable—it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said—to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.”
“Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.”
“You mean—evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into—whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume XIII: Case and the Dreamer

“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion