Gloomy

“We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.”
― J.G. Ballard, Crash

“Another day, in the rain, we're waiting for the boat at the lake; from happiness, this time, the same outburst of annihilation sweeps through me. This is how it happens sometimes, misery or joy engulfs me, without any particular tumult ensuing : nor any pathos: I am dissolved, not dismembered; I fall, I flow, I melt. Such thoughts grazed, touched, tested (the way you test the water with your foot)--can recur”
― Barthes Roland

“It is dull in this world, gentlemen!”
― Nikolai Gogol

“When you suffer, I suffer with you. To the end I am close to you.”
― Shūsaku Endō, Silence