--William Faulkner, The Sound And The Fury
Howard thought, Is it not true: A move of the head, a step to the left or right, and we change from wise, decent, loyal people to conceited fools? Light changes, our eyes blink and see the world from the slightest difference of perspective and our place in it has changed infinitely: Sun catches cheap plate flaking--I am a tinker; the moon is an egg glowing in its nest of leafless trees--I am a poet; a brochure for an asylum is on the dresser--I am an epileptic, insane; the house is behind me--I am a fugitive. His despair had not come from the fact that he was a fool; he knew he was a fool. The despair came from the fact that his wife saw him as a fool, as a useless tinker, a copier of bad verses from two-penny religious magazines, an epileptic, and could find no reason to turn her head and see him as something better.
--P. Harding, Tinkers
What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
--Jack Kerouac, On The Road
I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.
--Judith Guest, Ordinary People
I want to do something splendid...something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it and mean to astonish you all someday.
--Louisa May Alcott, Little Women