Virtuous Libertines

“I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of.

But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run.” -Lauren Oliver, Delirium

"Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" works in an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower." - Richard Russo, Empire Falls

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.” ― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

"If it weren't for greed, intolerance, hate, passion and murder, you would have no works of art, no great buildings, no medical science, no Mozart, no Van Gough, no Muppets and no Louis Armstrong." - Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy

"Sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation." - Stephen King

"Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself." - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.” - Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.” - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

"Her liquid gaze held fated depths, her full lips invited touch. There was power, too, in her air of stillness: She might have been an Archangel, something winged and terrible come to rest." - Stephanie Baron, from “The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf,”

"The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. " - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables