Brandon

“For the place where I was put to live
is stripped of good more and more each day
and seems disposed to perdition.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Purgatorio

“That’s the whole game: Becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf. [...] How emphatically can you like what you like? How long are you willing to work on something, to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference?" -George Saunders”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

“That Rome, which made the world good, used to have two suns; and they made visible two paths—the world's path and the pathway that is God's. One has eclipsed the other; now the sword has joined the shepherd's crook; the two together must of necessity result in evil.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Purgatorio

“We are like people drawn inside of a square on a piece of paper. We cannot get out of the black lines, we exhaust ourselves by examining every part of the square, hoping to find a fissure. Until one of us suddenly understands, because he was predestined to understand, that within the plane of the paper escape is impossible. That the exit, simple and open wide, is perpendicular to the paper, in a third dimension that up until that moment was inconceivable.”
― Mircea Cărtărescu, Solenoid