Thomas

“There are four good things worth practicing. Being kind toward everything alive. Staying level and steady. Feeling happy for any creature anywhere that is happy. And remembering that any suffering is also yours.”
― Richard Powers, Bewilderment

“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law. Co-operation”
― Will Durant, The Lessons of History

“Art is not difficult because it wishes to be difficult, but because it wishes to be art.”
― Donald Barthelme, Not-Knowing: The Essays and Interviews of Donald Barthelme