10
" Scarcely has night arrived to undeceive, unfurling her wings of crepe (wings drained even of the glimmer just now dying in the tree-tops); scarcely has the last glint still dancing on the burnished metal heights of the tall towers ceased to fade, like a still glowing coal in a spent brazier, which whitens gradually beneath the ashes, and soon is indistinguishable from the abandoned hearth, than a fearful murmur rises amongst them, their teeth chatter with despair and rage, they hasten and scatter in their dread, finding witches everywhere, and ghosts. It is night... and Hell will gape once more. "
― Charles Nodier , Smarra & Trilby
15
" Once out of the mailroom, I began to learn more about fear. As soon
as fear begins to ascend, anatomically, from the pit of the stomach to the
throat and brain, from fear of violence to the more nameless kind, you
come to believe you are part of a horrible experiment. I learned to
distrust those superiors who encouraged independent thinking. When you
gave it to them, they returned it in the form of terror, for they knew
that ideas, only that, could hasten their obsolescence. Management asked
for new ideas all the time; memos circulated down the echelons, requesting
bold and challenging concepts. But I learned that new ideas could finish
you unless you wrapped them in a plastic bag. I learned that most of the
secretaries were more intelligent than most of the executives and that the
executive secretaries were to be feared more than anyone. I learned what
closed doors meant and that friendship was not negotiable currency and how
important it was to lie even when there was no need to lie. Words and
meanings were at odds. Words did not say what was being said nor even its
reverse. I learned to speak a new language and soon mastered the special
elements of that tongue. "
― Don DeLillo , Americana
18
" The Illusory SelfI am composed of body and soul, I seem to have mind, reason, sense, yet I find none of them my own. For where was my body prior to my birth, and whither will it go when I have departed? Where are the various states produced by the life stages of an illusory self? Where is the newborn babe, the child, the boy, the pubescent, the stripling, the bearded youth, the lad, the full-grown man? Whence came the soul, whither will it go, how long will it be our mate? Can we tell its essential nature? When did we acquire it? Prior to our birth? But we were not then in existence. What of it after death? But then we who are embodied, compounds endowed with quality, shall be no more, but shall hasten to our rebirth, to be with the unbodied, without composition and without quality. But now, inasmuch as we are alive, we are the dominated rather than the rulers, known rather than knowing. The soul knows us, though unknown by us, and imposes commands we are obliged to obey as wervants their mistress. And when it will, it will transact its divorce in court and depart, leaving our home desolate of life. If we press it to remain, it will dissolve our relationship. So subtle is its nature that it furnishes no handle to the body. "
