Dustin Stauffer

“Time passes, the planet has its many histories, and things decline. That’s all there is to it.”
― Izumi Suzuki, Terminal Boredom: Stories

“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

“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

“False hopes are more dangerous than fears.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin