Beril

“This great evil, where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?”
― James Jones, The thin red line

“ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.”
― Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With André

“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.

I will protect those who cannot protect themselves.

I will protect even those I hate so long as it is right.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive 4 Book Set: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Edgedancer, Oathbringer

“Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.”
― Federico Fellini, La Dolce Vita: Federico Fellini's Masterpiece