Bionic Jean

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom we can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.”
― George Orwell, Inside the Whale: On Writers and Writing

“I am Diogenes the Dog. I nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy and bite scoundrels.”
― Diogenes of Sinope

“It's easy to be cynical about death when you're young. When you are young, death is an anomaly. It's not real. It only affects other people. It's a bullet you'll dodge easily. It's why young people can go into battle: they really will live forever. They know.

As you stick around, as you go around the Earth, you realize that life is an ever-narrowing conveyor belt. Slowly, inexorably, it takes us all along with it, and one by one we tumble off the side of the conveyor belt into darkness. . .

They fall off the conveyor belt into the darkness, our friends, and we cannot talk to them anymore.”
― Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction