"A man who has blown all his options can’t afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can’t afford to admit — no matter how often he’s reminded of it — that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley…"

-- Hunter S. Thompson

"The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments."

~ Gustave Flaubert

“The world shall be nothing but a howl of pain and ecstasy, and the purest among men shall only be able to avoid self-contempt by resorting to weariness. The choice of agony will be the only choice left, and this will be sooner than we expect.”

—Albert Caraco

"We Americans cannot save the world. Even Christ failed at that. We Americans have our hands full in trying to save ourselves. And we've barely tried."

-- Edward Abbey

“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.”

~ Mark Twain

There is no love
(Not nearly, not enough)
We live unaided,
We die abandoned.

The appeal for pity
Resonates in the void
Our bodies are crippled,
But our flesh is eager.

Gone are the promises
Of a teenage body,
We enter an old age
Where nothing awaits us

Except the vain memory
Of our last days,
A convulsion of hate
And naked despair.

—Michel Houellebecq

“All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”

—James Fenimore Cooper

“The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.”

—Chuang Tzu

“There are people who want to fight to bring about peace—the most deluded souls of all. There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and mind.

Murder is the apex of the broad pyramid whose base is the self. That which stands will have to fall. Everything which man has fought for will have to be relinquished before he can begin to live as man.

Up till now he has been a sick beast and even his divinity stinks. He is master of many worlds and in his own he is a slave. What rules the world is the heart, not the brain, in every realm our conquests bring only death.

We have turned our backs on the one realm wherein freedom lies.”

— Henry Miller

“There is every reason to be sad at this moment: all the premonitions which I have had for ten years are coming true. This is one of the lowest moments in the history of the human race. There is no sign of hope on the horizon. The whole world is involved in slaughter and bloodshed. I repeat—I am not sad. Let the world have its bath of blood…”

— Henry Miller

“Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection, and it offers a greater range for enjoyment and appreciation than, possibly, any other purely sensory thing.”

—Ernest Hemingway

“The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.”

― George Orwell

"War is a sociological safety valve that cleverly diverts popular hatred for the ruling classes into a happy occasion to mutilate or kill foreign enemies.”

~ Ernest Becker

“Each civilization represents an answer to the questions the universe proposes; but the mystery remains intact; new civilizations, with new curiosities, will come to try their luck, quite as vainly, each of them being merely a system of mistakes."

~Emil Cioran

“Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.”

—Jim Morrison

"I feel my failure intensely
as if it were a vital organ
the gods grew from the side of my head.
You can't cover it with a hat and I no longer
can sleep on that side it's so tender.
I wasn't quite faithful enough
to carry this sort of weight up the mountain.
When I took my vows at nineteen
I had no idea that gods were so merciless.
Fear makes for good servants
and bravery is fraudulent. When I awoke
I wasn't awake enough."

~ Jim Harrison

“On and on we go, for the mental consciousness labours under the illusion that there is somewhere to go to, a goal to consciousness. Whereas of course there is no goal.

Consciousness is an end in itself. We torture ourselves getting somewhere, and when we get there it is nowhere, for there is nowhere to get to.”

— D.H. Lawrence

“I realized either I was crazy
or the world was crazy;
and I picked on the world.
And of course I was right.”

― Jack Kerouac

“This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. All games are basically hostile. Winners and losers. We see them all around us: the winners and the losers. The losers can oftentimes become winners, and the winners can very easily become losers. ”

― William S. Burroughs

"In America you can say anything you want - as long as it doesn't have any effect."

--Paul Goodman