On the ultimate question thrown by Heidegger's Angst

I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all.

- Neutral Milk Hotel, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

On the nature of the universe

There is a war on but it's... we're like ants on a battlefield, we haven't the heads to understand even a fraction of what's going on all around us. This whole universe is just... it's like a munitions factory. They make bombs here, Dane. We're just the end product of a factory process carried out by gigantic Manichaean intelligences. That's what it's all about: they're trying to perfect your soul, they're trying to make you like Buddha or Jesus because a perfected human soul is the ultimate weapon. That's what all of humanity's spiritual fucking aspirations amount to: the highest and best thing we can ever become is a bomb.

- The King-Of-All-Tears, under the guise of the future Dane McGowan,
from Grant Morrison, The Invisibles

London

- Of course London's a big place.
- It's a very big place, Mr Shadrack. A man could lose himself in London. Lose himself... lose himself... Lose himself in London!

- from Billy Liar, as sampled on St Etienne, You're In A Bad Way

Against capitalist pragmatism

The more sophisticated the rationalisation offered for patently sub-optimal circumstances, the more evil there is to hide. If something that strikes you as bad is presented as better than all the alternatives, then you know that evil is afoot because you are effectively being discouraged from asking how things got so bad in the first place.

- Steve Fuller, The Intellectual

Where were you when the fun stopped?

It was the death of fun, unreeling right in front of us, unraveling, withering, collapsing, draining away in the darkness like a handful of stolen mercury. Yep, the silver stuff goes suddenly, leaving only a glaze of poison on the skin.

- Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

On being happy

You won't be happy with me,
But give me one more chance
You won't be happy anyway.

- The Magnetic Fields, 100,000 Fireflies

On the eidetics of recognition

Self-consciousness is in and for itself in and through the fact that it exists in and for itself for an other. That is, it exists only as recognized or acknowledged. The concept of this unity in its doubling, the infinity realizing itself in self-consciousness, is a many-sided intersection of and correlation between multiple and diverse meanings. Consequently its elements must, on the one hand, be precisely distinguished and kept separate, and on the other hand these must be taken as not different in their differentiation, or they must be taken and known in their opposite meaning. The double signification of the distinguished elements lies in the nature of self-consciousness to be infinite, or to be immediately the opposite of the determination in which it is posited. The exposition of this spiritual unity in its doubling will present the movement of recognition.

- G.W.F Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
(trans. Robert R. Williams)

On work

Some men here
they have a special interest
in your career - they want to help you to grow
and then siphon all your dough
why don't you find out for yourself?

- Morrissey, Why don't you find out for yourself

Re-embodiment

I could not get through September without a battle
I faced death
I went in with my arms swinging
but I heard my own breath
I had to face that I'm still living

I'm still flesh
I hold on to awful feelings

I'm not dead
there's no end
my face is red
my blood flows harshly

my heart beats loudly

my chest still draws breath
I hold it
I'm buoyant
there's no end

- The Microphones, The Glow, pt 2

This is it

I've got to take Jeremy's advice more often: I'm out on a date with a teenage goth, smoking pot in the Lazerbowl toilets... this is it. This is literally, it. This is the sort of thing people do when they're having a good time.

- Mark, Peep Show

Flux

There is nothing permanent except change.

- Heraclitus

On things we never said

Don't you ever ponder on things we never said?
Yes I did
But when we were kids
Now it's too late
Because we're dead.

- Slow Club, Because We're Dead