Greg

“Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don’t find yourself.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“When all is said and done scholars can do no more than find in nature what is already there.”
― Eugène Delacroix, The Journal of Eugene Delacroix

“There is nothing so moving - not even acts of love or hate - as the discovery that one is not alone.”
― Robert Ardrey, The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations

“The thing is, work has simply swamped my whole existence. Slowly but surely it's robbed me of my mother, my wife, and everything that meant anything to me. It's like a germ planted in the skull that devours the brain, spreads to the trunk and the limbs, and destroys the entire body in time. No sooner am I out of bed in the morning than work clamps down on me and pins me to my desk before I've even had a breath of fresh air. It follows me to lunch and I find myself chewing over sentences as I'm chewing my food. It goes with me when I go out, eats out of my plate at dinner and shares my pillow in bed at night. It's so extremely merciless that once the process of creation is started, it's impossible for me to stop it, and it goes on growing and working even when I'm asleep. ... Outside that, nothing, nobody exists.”
― Émile Zola, The Masterpiece