Day

“I was frightened even by God. I could not believe in His love, only in His punishment. Faith. That, I felt, was the act of facing the tribunal of justice with one’s head bowed to receive the scourge of God. I could believe in hell, but it was impossible for me to believe in the existence of heaven.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“And in fact, I myself do not believe that anybody ever looked into the world with a distrust as deep as mine, seeming, as I do, not simply the timely advocate of the devil, but, to employ theological terms, an enemy and challenger of God; and whosoever has experienced any of the consequences of such deep distrust, anything of the chills and the agonies of isolation to which such an unqualified difference of standpoint condemns him endowed with it, will also understand how often I must have sought relief and self-forgetfulness from any source—through any object of veneration or enmity”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human A Book for Free Spirits

“Deryn was quite astounding, really, and entirely worth throwing away an empire for.”
― Scott Westerfeld, The Leviathan Trilogy

“Would the hydrogen catch fire? Alek grasped the edge of the window, hardly feeling the broken glass against his palms.
“Deryn” he sobbed. Anything but this.”
― Scott Westerfeld, Goliath