notes.

"It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage." 
"Today there were fear, hatred and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows."
George Orwell

"When an animal decides to do something, it can do it for a very long time."
Yann Martel

"Would you rather be a human dissatisfied or a pig satisfied?"
J. S. Miller

"In a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness and extraordinary resemblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truthlike and filled with details so delicate, so unexpected and so artistically consistent, that a dreamer, were he a Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state." 

Fyodor Dostoevsky


"Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long". He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"Old."

"I'm not old."

"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow time down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"

"I do," Dunbar told him.

"Why?" Clevinger asked.

"What else is there?"
Joseph Heller

"To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people's feelings, to rend the thin veins of civilisation so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said." - Virginia Woolf.

"To ease the ache of anxiety that was swelling her heart, she hummed, then sang softly:

He walks wid me, He talks wid me
He tells me Ahm His own...

Guiltily, she stopped and smiled. "Looks like Ah jus cant seem t fergit them ol songs, mo mattah how hard Ah tries..." She had learned them when she was a little girl living and working on a farm. Every Monday morning from the corn and cotton fields the slow strains had floated filled with gall, she had learned their deep meaning. Long hours of scrubbing floors for a few cents a day had taught her who Jesus was, what a great boon it was to cling to him, to be like Him and suffer without a mumbling word. She had poured the yearning of her life into the songs, feeling buoyed with a faith beyond this world. The figure of the Man nailed in agony to the Cross, His burial in cold grave, His transfigured Resurrection, His being breath and clay, God and Man -- all had focused her feelings upon an imagery which had swept her life into a wondrous vision."
Richard Wright

"Chúa không nhân từ như mi tưởng. Chẳng có gì để gọi là tạo sinh. Chúa không biết sự đau đớn của mi. Người nói đó là sự tạo sinh của Người. Mi phải cầu nguyện cho giây phút này. Giây phút mi không chiến thắng được mi. Nhưng mi nhìn vào cái gì để cầu nguyện? Chúa ư? Người không hiện hữu nhưng Người luôn muốn mình là kẻ độc tôn."
Lê Minh Phong

"The most important thing is to discover your personal arrangement.  "What am I thinking about? What am I afraid of? What do I like? What do I want? Where do I want to go? With whom? What to do there?" Your growth, physical and spiritual, isn't over yet. Do all you can to grow and increase your qualities. It's your goal. Invest yourself completely in this practice. And use the energy to have fun, and make your life agreeable."
Yoshihiro Togashi

"Tôi có chờ đâu, có đợi đâu

Ðem chi xuân lại gợi thêm sầu ?

-- Với tôi, tất cả như vô nghĩa

Tất cả không ngoài nghĩa khổ đau !" 
Chế Lan Viên

"Chúng ta sẽ quên ngay những thứ đã thực hiện được rồi. Còn những thứ chưa bao giờ  thực hiện thì luôn nằm ở chỗ quan trọng nhất trong trái tim ta." 
Kyoichi Katayama