HAL 9000
I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. ―HAL 9000, 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke.
Category: Thriller
John Fowles
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face. ― John… Continue reading John Fowles
Chuck Palahniuk
It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace. — Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (Doubleday; First Edition, August 26, 2003)
William Peter Blatty
And I think—I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial, vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy. And there lies the heart of it, perhaps: in unworthiness. For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I… Continue reading William Peter Blatty
Arthur Conan Doyle
It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. — Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles (September 1, 1901)
Clive Barker
There’s no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn’t know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat. ― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume Two. (Berkley Books September 1986)
Peter Høeg
Do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing? … The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. — Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1993)
Charles Bukowski
She was perfect, pure maddening sex, and she knew it, and she played on it, dripped it, and allowed you to suffer for it. — Charles Bukowski, Factotum. (Ecco May 31, 2002) Originally published 1975.
Mark Z. Danielewski
My dear girl, is it that you are so lonely that you had to create this? — Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves. (Pantheon, Random House March 7, 2000)
Cormac McCarthy
How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? ― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men ( Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, July 11, 2006) Originally published July 2005.
The Vale of Soul-Making 