He will die all alone at the top of a barren mountain, wearing on his head a crown of thorns.
--Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation Of Christ


And so it was I entered the broken world
To trace the visionary company of love, its voice
An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)
But not for long to hold each desperate choice.
--Hart Crane

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'
--Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

All great and precious things are lonely.
--John Steinbeck, East Of Eden

Everyday I Bear A Burden
Every day I bear a burden, and I bear this calamity for a purpose: 
I bear the discomfort of cold and December's snow in hope of spring. 
Before the fattener-up of all who are lean, I drag this so emaciated body; 
Though they expel me from two hundred cities, I bear it for the sake of the love of a prince; 
Though my shop and house be laid waste, I bear it in fidelity to a tulip bed. 
God's love is a very strong fortress; I carry my soul's baggage inside a fortress. 
I bear the arrogance of every stonehearted stranger for the sake of a friend, of one long-suffering; 
For the sake of his ruby I dig out mountains and mine; for the sake of that rose-laden one I endure a thorn. 
For the sake of those two intoxicating eyes of his, like the intoxicated I endure crop sickness; 
For the sake of a quarry not to be contained in a snare, I spread out the snare and decoy of the hunter. 
He said, "Will you bear this sorrow till the Resurrection?" Yes, Friend, I bear it, I bear it. 
My breast is the Cave and Shams-e Tabrizi is the Companion of the Cave.
--Rumi

His mother called them his gems and often asked him why he liked things that were worn and old. It would have been hard to tell her. But there was something about the way in which the link of a chain was worn or the thread on a bolt or a castor-wheel that gave him a vague feeling of pain when he ran his fingers over them. They were like worn shoe-soles or very thin dimes. You never saw them wear, you only knew they were worn, obscurely aching.
--Henry Roth, Call It Sleep

When everyone drowns and I'm the only one to escape, God is protecting me. When everyone else is saved and I'm the only one to drown, God is protecting me then too.
--Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation Of Christ

Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life. That is something to remember when you meet the old classmate who says, "Well now, on our last expedition up the Congo-" or the one who says, "Gee, I got the sweetest little wife and three of the swellest kids ever-" You must remember it when you sit in hotel lobbies or lean over bars to talk to the bartender or walk down a dark street at night, in early March, and stare into a lighted window. And remember little Susie has adenoids and the bread is probably burned, and turn up the street, for the time has come to hand me down that walking cane, for I got to catch that midnight train, for all my sin is taken away. For whatever you live is life.
--Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men

How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said. 
I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it.
Nobody would know it.
It wouldn't make any difference. When you die it's the same as if everybody else died too.
--Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.
--Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

No, but why is Croft that way? 
Oh there are The Answers. He is that way because of the-corruption-of-the-society. He is that way because he is having problems of adjustment. It is because he is a Texan. It is because he has renounced God. He is that way because he was born that way, or because the Devil has claimed him for one of his own, or because the only woman he ever loved was untrue to him.
--Norman Mailer, The Naked And The Dead

She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.
--Marilynne Robinson, Home

But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?
--Lynda Barry, Cruddy

“You will, Judas, my brother. God will give you the strength, as much as you lack, because it is necessary—it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me. We two must save the world. Help me."
Judas bowed his head. After a moment he asked, "If you had to betray your master, would you do it?"
Jesus reflected for a long time. Finally he said, "No, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to. That is why God pitied me and gave me the easier task: to be crucified.” 
--Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation Of Christ

This is how sudden things happened that haunted forever.
--Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"
And the answer: "Where was man?
--William Styron, Sophie's Choice

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? What broke when he could bring himself to thrust down the knife into the warm flesh, to bring down the axe on the living head, to cleave down between the seeing eyes, to shoot the gun that would drive death into the beating heart?
--Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country

Shot? so quick, so clean an ending?
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
'Twas best to take it to the grave.

Oh you had forethought, you could reason,
And saw your road and where it led,
And early wise and brave in season
Put the pistol to your head.

Oh soon, and better so than later
After long disgrace and scorn,
You shot dead the household traitor,
The soul that should not have been born.

Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.

Souls undone, undoing others,---
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man.

Now to your grave shall friend and stranger
With ruth and some with envy come:
Undishonoured, clear of danger,
Clean of guilt, pass hence and home.

Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking;
And here, man, here's the wreath I've made:
'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking,
But wear it and it will not fade.
--A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad