"For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are." -CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

"Ah, what is the life of a human being—a drop of dew, a flash of lightning?" -Ryunosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

"When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don't use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with your words: you tell people you're doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you've killed him all the same. I don't know whose sin is greater - yours or mine." -Ryunosuke Akutagawa, The Life of a Stupid Man

"I know that the past was great and the future will be great, And I know that both curiously conjoint in the present time, (For the sake of him I typify, for the common average man’s sake, your sake if you are he,) And that where I am or you are this present day, there is the centre of all days, all races, And there is the meaning to us of all that has ever come of races and days, or ever will come." –Walt Whitman, With Antecedents

"The fire burns steadily in the hearth, and his mother tells him that the fire should never be allowed to go out, because if it does, the soul leaves the house." -Pete Hamill, Forever

"Sometimes you think too much for your own good lad," his mother said, and laughed out loud. -Pete Hamill, Forever

"The boy admonished himself for wanting everything to be a story. And now realized that some journeys were not stories. On some journeys, nothing really happened. You just keep taking steps." -Pete Hamill, Forever

"But now, as she was caught between gorgeousness and devastation, she looked more desirable than ever." -Tony O'Neill, Sick City