Brian Reid

“He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps.”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

“I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Love! Beyond meaure - beyond death - it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been without it.”
― John Galsworthy

“We shed as we pick up, like travelers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again.”
― Tom Stoppard, Arcadia