Every thing’s got a moral, if only you can find it.
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.
– Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass
I have said good-bye to people for greater distances and times, and, please God, I mean to see them yet again.
– R. L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
We live in a composite world, so we can see, while the demon lives in a world in balance and therefore cannot.
– Tor Norretranders, The User Illusion
You sense that there is something treacherous hiding behind every reef; no matter how much you explore you won’t ever know what it is.
– Jerzy Kosinski, The Devil Tree
Most people are probably looking for lovers with whom they can share basic interests. In my case, I’m looking for someone who can make me feel pain and fear, who can expose my real hang-ups.
-Jerzy Kosinski, The Devil Tree
The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection of our transitory life; it will assuredly topple and tend to overset…
– R. L. Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
…in fact the whole fabric of a man except the red of his blood and the black pigment of his hair, are all made up of transparent, colourless tissue. So little suffices to make us visible one to the other. For the most part the fibers of a living creature are no more opaque than water.
– H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man
Death was not the end of pain – to believe in peace was a kind of heresy.
– Graham Greene, The Power And The Glory
Here we are, I thought, a bunch of grown-up kids locked in an empty room playing naïve games with each other. No one understands anybody else. We are wandering around in dark caves, holding out little private candles, hoping for some great illumination. I don’t like to think I’m confused or simple-minded as the others, but if I really am more complex, more experienced than they are, why should I want them to understand me?
– Jerzy Kosinski, The Devil Tree