Saeb

“Evening in the garden of the Askanischer Hof. Ate
rice a la Trautmannsdorf and a peach. A man drinking
wine watched my attempts to cut the unripe little peach with my knife. I couldn’t. Stricken with shame under the old man’s eyes, I let the peach go completely and ten times leafed through Die Fliegenden Blatter. I waited to see if he wouldn’t at last turn away. Finally I collected all my strength and in defiance of him bit into the completely juiceless and expensive peach.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent.”
― mao tse-tung

“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?” Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22