Jeff Lanter

“Revenge. That's what he had come for... But it didn't really exist, did it?

Just empty regret and bitter heartbreak, wandering the streets.

The city around him, white and grey and cold, felt suddenly so small.

Hyde had been right about family, there was no escaping it...

Even when there was no one left to run from.”
― Ed Brubaker, Criminal, Vol. 2: Lawless

“Can you remember, Acte...how much easier our belief in Nero made life for us in the old days? And can you remember the paralysis, the numbness that seized the whole world when Nero died? Didn't you feel as if the world had grown bare and colorless all of a sudden? Those people on the Palatine have tried to steal our Nero from us, from you and me. Isn't splendid to think that we can show them they haven't succeeded? They have smashed his statues into splinters, erased his name from all the inscriptions, they even replaced his head on that huge statue in Rome with the peasant head of old Vespasian. Isn't it fine to teach them that all that hasn't been of the slightest use? Granted that they have been successful for a few years. For a few years they have actually managed to banish all imagination from the world, all enthusiasm, extravagance, everything that makes life worth living. But now, with our Nero, all these things are back again.”
― Lion Feuchtwanger, The False Nero