Dustin Stauffer

“Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life’s secrets. It’s the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. ‘We are too ego-centered,’ Suzuki tells Cage.’ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.”
― Kay Larson, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists

“The wise speak only of what they know”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“and so will the world end, I think, a victim of love rather than hate. For love's ever been the more destructive weapon, sure.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one...”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower