David

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes.”
― Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion

“Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.”
― Aleister Crowley

“Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.”
― Peter Watts, Blindsight