On loneliness

Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something negative - an absence of company, and, of course, something temporary... that day I has learned that it was much more. It was something which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary, and play tricks with the mind. Something which lurked inimically all around, stretching the nerves and twanging them with alarms, never letting one forget that there was no one to help, no one to care. It showed one as an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the time its chance to frighten and frighten horribly - that was what loneliness was really trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do...

- John Wyndham, The Day Of The Triffids

On giving up

Well everyday a prayer goes on its knees
I will quit the whites, the wine and the weed
falls to its belly
and crawls towards New York

- The Wave Pictures, Just Like A Drummer

On an important cause

"And you want us to help you, eh? Join this people's army of yours?"

"Of course!"

"What's in it for us, then?'

"Everything," the Marquess said "Forever."

- Exchange between Mallory and the Marquess of Hastings,
William Gibson & Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

On sleep

Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care...

- Macbeth

On the passing of time

Dying all day in thousands of little ways
Dancing alone and drinking a lot
Closing the clubs and
Haunting the cabarets
Looking for what?
Another five years off your life

- The Magnetic Fields, If You Don't Cry

On the meaning of you're done

And you better not be angry
and you'd better not be sad
you'd better just enjoy
the luxury of sympathy
if thats a luxury you have

and you know no private bad
you know that that's the meaning of you're done
in a world that's not so bad
in a world that time is killing in the sun

- Built To Spill, Velvet Waltz

On memories

Cowboy does not intend that the memory should ever die. There are memories that live for him as his present reality does not, and he shines them daily, like the finish of a fine new car, to keep them bright.

- Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired

On drugs

Dope comes in just two dosages: too much and not enough.

- P.J. O'Rouke, Tune In, Turn On, Go To The Office Late On Monday

On dissociation

Sometimes it feels like the world's stuffed with feathers
table-bottom gum just holding it together
a cold son
I am

- Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Cold Son

On being special

We're special
in other ways
ways our
mothers appreciate

- Built To Spill, Kicked It In The Sun

On the event of love

When two people fall in love, their "meeting" - whether that meeting be their first hours together, or the length of their entire courtship - forms an event for them in relation to which they change their lives. This certainly does not mean that their lives are simply going to be the better for it; on the contrary, love may involve debt, alienated friends, and rupture with one's family. The point is that love changes their relation to the world irrevocably. The duration of the lover's relationship depends upon their fidelity to that event and how they change according to what they discover through their love.

- Oliver Feltham & Justin Clemens, from the introduction to Alan Badiou's Infinite Thought

I hope

Yeah, time's the great destroyer... but when it finally takes us over, I hope we float away together.

-Low, Walk Into The Sea

Chesterton reminds me of Pynchon, who reminds me of Lovecraft

These tall, these star-blotting Muslim angels...

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

On needs

Our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so intertwined that we cannot think straightly of one without the others

- M.F.K. Fisher, The Art Of Eating

On not worrying

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

- Matthew, 6:34

On sickness

how long can i contain
this wretched that no cure can tame
feel
it coursing through me still
never knew
that i
could be
so ill

- Pale Saints Hair Shoes

Tonight we'll stay alive

Don't you try to shoot up the sky, to shoot up the sky,
tonight,
we'll stay alive

- The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, Stay Alive

Too late

Been meaning to tell you what I've been thinking of
You an me forever
Let's fall back in love

- Slow Club Let's Fall Back In Love

Philosophy by stealth

Parapsychology has no word for the uneasy feeling you have when you're in the presence of yourself. *

...

* Although, strictly speaking, humans feel it all the time.

- Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

More on being happy

There ought to be a prison for dudes who think they can make some happiness in this life.

Roast Beef, Achewood