Suppose this. Suppose all time was not the way it is with us. Suppose its mellifluous curves and parabolas, its contactions and contortions, the furious or sedate blood of its pulse, were of a different mathermatics altogether. Or say the eye that views could view with the remoteness and slowness of rocks and growing, continents being born, galaxies rollercoasting through the universe. Imagine if we could stand above the flow of time and look down on it -- just like we stood on Mount Dandenong and looked down on the dots of traffic ten miles away and below. But there is a bleakness all around. We can't imagine anything. We can't suppose. We are trapped inside the thickest of boundaries.

"Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry."

J.D. Salinger, from The Catcher In The Rye

"You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation, and that is called loving. Well then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else."

Hermann Hesse

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

— Douglas Adams

"And me, I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for, ‘cause it’s not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something, and if you find that moment… it lasts forever…"

The Beach

"There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they're exceptions to the rule.”

-Banksy

“If an individual has faith that he is Napoleon, then you say he’s loony. But if a hundred million people have faith in some god, then because it’s a hundred million, you’re supposed to respect it. But there’s actually no more evidence for their god, than for the lunatic’s belief that he’s Napoleon.”

- Richard Dawkins, in “The Nature of Existence”

"Why is it that as a culture we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than two men holding hands?"