Steven Marciano

“The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he onced dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.”
― John Williams, Augustus

“If I could trace a single line below the surface of my assumptions, would there come a point when clarity supersedes the chaos of what has been? The tragic sense of destiny is inherent in every man; but I defy fate, I alone am responsible for every action, every scene; in my nothingness I will create the idea, I shall see what I have imagined, and from that alone will spring my entire actions.”
― Ann Quin, Berg

“Perhaps to the soldier the civilian is the man who employs him to kill, who includes the guilt of murder in the pay-envelope and escapes responsibility.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.”
― W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn