jade

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don’t find out the answer as to why we were ever alive. Even the avowed atheist probably thinks that in death he’ll get some answer. I mean God will be there, or there won’t be anything at all. “But that’s just it,” I said, “we don’t make any discovery at that moment! We merely stop! We pass into nonexistence without ever knowing a thing.” I saw the universe, a vision of the sun, the planets, the stars, black night going on forever. And I began to laugh. “Do you realize that! We’ll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it’s over!” I shouted at Nicolas, who was sitting back on the bed, nodding and drinking his wine out of a flagon. “We’re going to die and not even know. We’ll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won’t any longer be witnesses to it. We won’t have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We’ll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!” But I had stopped laughing. I stood still and I understood perfectly what I was saying! There was no judgment day, no final explanation, no luminous moment in which all terrible wrongs would be made right, all horrors redeemed. The witches burnt at the stake would never be avenged. No one was ever going to tell us anything! No, I didn’t understand it at this moment. I saw it! And I began to make the single sound: “Oh!” I said it again “Oh!” and then I said it louder and louder and louder, and I dropped the wine bottle on the floor. I put my hands to my head and I kept saying it, and I could see my mouth opened in that perfect circle that I had described to my mother and I kept saying, “Oh, oh, oh!”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

“He only just managed not to cry. He did this by angering himself at God for making him suffer and pay for sins he had been backed into. God ringed you round with hounds and cornered you, then speared you with your back against a tree.”
― Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche