Simon

“There’s a world we can’t see. It exists separately and concurrently with the real world. You enter this world by the offering of prayer and incantation. You live in this world wholly within your mind. You dispel the real world through mental discipline. You rebuff the real world through your enforced mental will. Your interior world will give you what you want and what you need to survive.”
― James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

“In a book, all would have gone according to plan … but life was so fucking untidy – what could you say for an existence where some of the most crucial conversations of your life took place when you needed to take a shit, or something? An existence where there weren’t even any chapters?”
― Stephen King, Misery

“I learn things late—and only the hard way.”
― James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

“The major stumbling block for coping well with our conflicts in living with each other is set up when we interfere with another person’s decision-making process, when we routinely manipulate our fellow man’s wants by making him feel anxiously threatened, guilty, or ignorant.”
― Manuel J. Smith, When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: How to Cope, Using the Skills of Systematic Assertive Therapy