"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and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything."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

"Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes ... See MoreSee Less

"The rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains."
- Ray Bradbury, The Long Rain ... See MoreSee Less

"The city is a pit. The bottom is dark, but the top is light. One struggles to reach the top, but the mud pulls one back."
- Victor Hugo, Les Misérables ... See MoreSee Less