22
" GOD. Sometimes I think there might be a god out there, and that every once in a while he tunes in to see what we're up to, and have a good laugh at how we like to dress him up in various costume. Robes, thorny crowns, yarmulkes and curls, saris and butt-hugging yoga pants. Male, female, a genderless reincarnation factory; a Mother Earth or a withholding Father Christmas. I would think it would amuse the hell out of him. That we're all idolaters, worshiping figments of our own creation who bear no resemblance to him.
Maybe he's sitting in some alternate dimension somewhere, saying, 'Shit, I didn't even create the world! I was just cooking my dinner, not paying attention to the heat, and suddenly here was this big band and a few hours later, a bunch of dinosaurs... "
― Suzanne Morrison , Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment
24
" ... nature did not make us to feel too good for too long (which would be no good for the survival of the species) but only to feel good enough to imagine, erroneously, that someday we might feel good all the time. To believe that humanity will ever live in a feel-good world is a common mistake. And if we do not feel good, we should act as if we do. If you act happy, then you will become happy—everybody in the workaday world knows that. If you do not improve, then someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. We are on our way to the future, and no introverted melancholic is going to impede our progress. You have two choices: start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin the world of fabricated reality—civilization, that is—or stubbornly insist on . . . what? That we should rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch, questioning all the ways and means that delivered us to a lofty prominence over the amusement park of creation? Try to be realistic. We made our world just the way nature and the Lord wanted us to make it. There is no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no nihilistic head case is going to get a bad word in edgewise. The universe was created by the Creator, goddamn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, as we spin upon this good earth, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to become unraveled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double plus good and never will be and who believes that anyone is better off dead than alive. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. It is the trap of tomorrow. Love it or leave it—choose which and choose fast. You will never get us to give up our hopes, demented as they may seem. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. Your opinions are not certified by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity, and therefore whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to assign to you who are only “one of those people.” So get the hell out if you can. But we are betting that when you start hurting badly enough, you will come running back. If you are not as strong as Samson— that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines—then you will return to the trap. Do you think we are morons? We have already thought everything that you have thought. The only difference is that we have the proper and dignified sense of futility not to spread that nasty news. Our shibboleth: “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness. "
― Thomas Ligotti , The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
35
" You scare me, Ryan Daley. Even more than those demons outside that scream for my death. How is it that I want what you want? I’ve spent an eternity feeling powerless. Love did that to me — robbed me of all control. I never expected to feel this way again. I don’t want to feel.’
‘Neither did I,’ Ryan rasps, ‘because feeling anything at all was dangerous. If I let myself feel, then maybe I’d have to believe what everyone was saying — that Lauren was dead. But from the moment I laid eyes on “Carmen, you kept getting under my skin. At first, all you did was irritate the hell out of me, bailing me up that way outside my house, inviting yourself along for the ride when all I wanted was to be left alone. But that irritation turned into curiosity, which turned into something else, becoming this chain of, of … feeling that brought me here. I dropped everything for you. I veered left. And I’d do it again in a second. That’s what “feeling” does. It tells you you’re alive, it gives things … I don’t know, proper meaning. You’re still trying to maintain some veneer of independence? Toughness? Do words like that even apply to you? But I see through it, Mercy. I see through you. You’re not that different from me after all, under your armour. Crumbs, Mercy, that’s all I’m after. Just crumbs. It’s not a lot to ask for. "
― Rebecca Lim