--George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
That was another thing people used to be able to do, which they can't do anymore: enjoy in their heads events which hadn't happened yet and might never occur. My mother was good at that. Someday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot of people wanted to read instead. And we would get a new house in a beautiful city, and nice clothes, and so on. She used to make me wonder why God had ever gone to all the trouble of creating reality.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
If they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away
--Toni Morrison, Beloved
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.
--Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Here is a girl who is pretty in a quiet way. I bet she's had a very sad life.
--Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone
He was probably able to stay. For every day he recognized more clearly that their love, of which they were so vain and to which they secretly encouraged one another, had nothing to do with him. He almost had to smile at their exertions, and it was obvious how little they could have him in mind.
How could they know who he was? He was now terribly difficult to love, and he felt that only One would be capable of it. But He was not yet willing.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, The Prodigal Son