Ryan Williamson

“The recovery of the outcasts demanded reduction of the privileges of the powerful, so the excluded who became aware of their exclusion had to be branded as heretics, whatever their doctrine. And for their part, blinded by their exclusion, they were not really interested in any doctrine. This is the illusion of heresy. Everyone is heretical, everyone is orthodox. The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion... Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“All traffic with the brains drowned realm is sorcery: Our bards, salvaging notions from their minds to plant in those of others, where they grow to splendours, else atrocities”
― Alan Moore, From Hell

“It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“Fear releases power. Man might be more tolerable, less fractious and smug, if he had more to fear. I do not mean fear of the intangible, the suffocation of the introvert, but physical fear, cold, sweating fear for one's life, fear of the unseen menacing beast, imminent, bristly, tusked and terrible, ravening for one's own hot saline blood.”
― J.A. Baker, The Peregrine