5
" Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace.The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscapeby a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer;my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning —and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me.At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and Iwould rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at.So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light.Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variationswhich I’ve named Prometheus,after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back.I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? —I also cannot stop listening. "
6
" You want to know who the strongest man in the Kabuki District is? You must be new in town. You won't last long with that attitude. Forget it. This town is on a whole different level. You got thugs, brawlers, vigilantes and rogue warriors from all over Edo here. It's like a haven for hooligans. This is for your own good. Have a drink and go back to the countryside. What's that? You want me to tell you about the top dogs before you go? You really like this stuff. First, there are four monsters on a level of their own: The Fierce and Divine Madamoiselle Saigo, Doromizu Jirocho the Gallant, Peacock Princess Kada and Empress Otose. The four factions are in a standoff which preserves a fragile balance of power. Who would be the strongest in a fight? You wouldn't be able to even scratch those beasts. Saigo and Jirocho in particular, were heroes during the Joui War. Well, they're too old to go on a tear now. If you want someone who's currently active, there's Katsuro Kuroguma, a young leader in the Doromizu Faction. He's the most feared man in Kabuki District right now. You'll also find a few former Joui in Saigo's Faction. There are rumours about Kada's Faction having ties to some crazy folk. Otose's Faction? It's just a bar, really. She's just an old lady with a soft heart. But if you try any funny business on her turf, you'll run into a certain guy. A guy who holds his own against the Big Three by himself. One hell of a monster, with hair that's completely white. A demon... "
― Hideaki Sorachi
7
" I feel as though dispossessed from the semblances of some crystalline reality to which I’d grown accustomed, and to some degree, had engaged in as a participant, but to which I had, nevertheless, grown inexplicably irrelevant. But the elements of this phenomenon are now quickly dissolving from memory and being replaced by reverse-engineered Random Access actualizations of junk code/DNA consciousness, the retro-coded catalysts of rogue cellular activity. The steel meshing titters musically and in its song, I hear a forgotten tale of the Interstitial gaps that form pinpoint vortexes at which fibers (quanta, as it were) of Reason come to a standstill, like light on the edge of a Singularity. The gaps, along their ridges, seasonally infected by the incidental wildfires in the collective unconscious substrata.
Heat flanks passageways down the Interstices. Wildfires cluster—spread down the base trunk Axon in a definitive roar: hitting branches, flaring out to Dendrites to give rise to this release of the very chemical seeds through which sentience is begotten.
Float about the ether, gliding a gentle current, before skimming down, to a skip over the surface of a sea of deep black with glimmering waves. And then, come to a stop, still inanimate and naked before any trespass into the Field, with all its layers that serve to veil. Plunge downward into the trenches. Swim backwards, upstream, and down through these spiraling jets of bubbles. Plummet past the threshold to trace the living history of shadows back to their source virus. And acquire this sense that the viruses as a sample, all of the outlying populations withstanding: they have their own sense of self-importance, too. Their own religion. And they mine their hosts barren with the utilitarian wherewithal that can only be expected of beings with self-preservationist motives. "
― Ashim Shanker , Sinew of the Social Species
9
" Do you, Damon Chroi, sovereign of the Goblin Kingdom, take this woman, Diana Piper, to be your queen and wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in times of angry gods and rogue goblins, in true name-induced death and in health, because she resurrected you - you lucky bastard - to love and to cherish even when she's more powerful than you and kicking your ass at everything you do, from this day forward until she can no longer stand the smell of rain? - Roman D'Angelo "
19
" Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?” Clary nodded.
“I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realized then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.” Clary licked her dry lips. “Well, you did,” she said. “Kiss me, I mean.”
He reached up and took a curl of her hair between his fingers. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his soap and skin and hair.
“Not enough,” he said, letting her hair slip through his fingers. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough. "
― Cassandra Clare , City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments, #5)
20
" Make no mistake. The greatest destroyer of ecology. The greatest source of waste, depletion and pollution. The greatest purveyor of violence, war, crime, poverty, animal abuse and inhumanity. The greatest generator of personal and social neurosis, mental disorders, depression, anxiety. Not to mention the greatest source of social paralysis, stopping us from moving into new methodologies for personal health, global sustainability and progress on this planet, is not some corrupt government or legislation.
Not some rogue corporation or banking cartel.
Not some flaw of human nature and not some secret cabal that controls the world.
It is the socioeconomic system itself at its very foundation. "
― Peter Joseph
