David

“When all of the family was stilled in sleep, when the streetlamp a few paces from the house shone at night and made grotesque shadows of the trees upon the house, when the river sighed off into the darkness, when the trains hooted on their way to Montreal far upriver, when the winds swished in the soft treeleaves and something knocked and rattled on the old barn, you could stand in the road and look at this home and know that there is nothing more haunting than a house at night when the family is asleep, something strangely tragic, something beautiful forever.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Town and the City

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization.”
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

“The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.”
― J.M. Coetzee