"Sometimes, when I wake up at night, I feel invisible hands weaving my destiny, and this destiny is a web of stupidity and ignorance, of the indifference of everyone and each for all."
- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet ... See MoreSee Less

"Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth."
- Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times ... See MoreSee Less

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."
- Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being ... See MoreSee Less

"To see a candle's light one must take it into a dark place."
- Ursula K. Le Guin ... See MoreSee Less

"The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything."
- Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop ... See MoreSee Less

"And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!"
- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven ... See MoreSee Less

"Where solitude ends, there begins the marketplace; and where the marketplace begins, there begins too the noise of the great actors and the buzzing of poisonous flies"
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ... See MoreSee Less

"We Scots, Rebus thought, we're not very good at going public. We store up our true feelings like fuel for long winter nights of whisky and recrimination. So little of us ever reaches the surface, it's a wonder we exist at all."
- Ian Rankin, Mortal Causes ... See MoreSee Less

"The dark is not an end, but a beginning. It is the light that reveals what the darkness has hidden, and the shadows that give depth to the world."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea ... See MoreSee Less

"A flash of lightning... then night! Fleeting beauty, by whose glance I was suddenly reborn, will I see you no more before eternity?"
- Charles Baudelaire, To a Passer-by ... See MoreSee Less

"A multitude of people and yet a solitude."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities ... See MoreSee Less

"It was one of those days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade."
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations ... See MoreSee Less

"The day was returning, and with it the sense of life and light which had been so long absent from the world."
- Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South ... See MoreSee Less

"Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotise."
- Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun ... See MoreSee Less