Monster

“Rafe and Richard say that when my education is sufficient you mean to marry me to some old dowager with a great settlement and black teeth, and she will wear me out with lechery and rule me with her whims, and she will leave her estate away from the children she has and they will hate me and scheme against my life and one morning I shall be dead in my bed.” The spaniel swivels in his son’s arms, turns on him her mild, round, wondering eyes. “They are making sport of you, Gregory. If I knew such a woman, I would marry her myself.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus

“The benefit of writing short stories is that they allow you to get rejected sooner. If you write a novel, it could take years for your work to be rejected.”
― Joseph Harold Bunting, Let's Write a Short Story!: Get Published Sooner with Your First Short Story

“It seems impossible, in a big city like Paris, but you can waste hours looking for the right place to burn up a corpse.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler