Bernardo

“And when pain bites, men bargain. Boys too. We twist and turn, we plead and beg, we offer our tormentors what he wants so that the hurting will stop. And when there is no torturer to placate, no hooded man with hot irons and tongs, just a burn you can't escape, we bargain with God, or ourselves, depending on the size of our egos.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“Your dreams are what will tear you apart. Every man is the victim of his own imagination: we all carry the seeds of our own destruction.” He tapped a long finger to his forehead. “It feeds on your fears.”
― Mark Lawrence, The Wheel of Osheim

“Pain is suffering because we want to be free of it, and pleasure is suffering because we fear to lose it. Fools search for freedom, but there is no freedom. There is only the embrace.”
― Brian Staveley, The Last Mortal Bond

“Everybody on this island has one ambition, which may be summed up very simply. It is to do something, however small it may be, better than anyone else. Of course, it’s an ideal we don’t all achieve. But in this modern world the great thing is to have an ideal. Achieving it is considerably less important.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End