The following may contain unmarked spoilers from various media, including but not limited to: Umineko When They Cry, The Beginner's Guide, Deltarune, House of Leaves, 1984, 17776, Nisemonogatari, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Bocchi the Rock, The Tatami Galaxy, Doctor Who, Celeste, The Stanley Parable, It's Such a Beautiful Day, World of Tomorrow, Doki Doki Literature Club, RIBBIT, and Shimeji Simulation.
Art Reduced to Personal Expression
— [omitted]
I believe myself to be always acting within reasonal boundaries of sanity.
— Itsuki Koizumi
Love you bastards! Motherfu—!
— Hiroi Kikuri
Fear and love are right next to each other in the brain. Most humans can’t really tell the difference! In fact, I’m not sure there is a difference!
— Bill Cipher
The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free.
— Audre Lorde
You're always the main character of your own life, right? Why are you acting like a supporting actor? ...You have to get up on the stage yourself without being pushed.
— Ushiromiya Jessica
I'm in despair! The Internet has left me in despair!
— Itoshiki Nozomu
You know how you're not seeing the star as it is, right now? Like you're seeing it light years in the past, and that's how long it took for light to reach us—that's what it's like with stand-up comedy. I talk about things like they happened recently; but in real life, I've completely imploded.
— Gianmarco Soresi
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
— Abraham Lincoln
Ain't no better story than one told with sparkling eyes. Doubt, irony, that's what poisons your story... That, and too much predictability.
— Old Man
A professor's view: "It's the commentaries on Shakespeare that matter, not Shakespeare."
— Anton Chekhov
Love Is A Many Razor Bladed Thing
— Doopees
Except now hes built up a tolerance. Not against the pain, but against the relief. His own brain pathways have abandoned him and left him to suffer. Direct confrontation with suffering now fails. He can only run now
— wholelottared
In its deliberate attempt to be real, it's more real than the real thing.
— Deishuu Kaiki
Made with all the love I'm legally allowed to give!
— Bubble
Only this one holy medium brings me peace of mind.
— Adam Jones
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
— George Orwell
There are cathedrals everywhere for those with the eyes to see
— Jordan B. Peterson
The past inside the present.
— Boards of Canada
Can we just pretend, just a little bit between the two of us, that the world isn't fucking terrible?
— JellyChannelTTV
For some reason, human failings are very endearing in an animal.
— Jim Davis
The "discourse" around problematic fiction and fantasy is beyond infuriating. The way people act about it is infantile at best. It is not about protecting victims. It is not about protecting children or women. It's about cheap popularity contests and bloating their own ego. It is truly disgusting.
— MATRIARDIST
People associate evil with darkness. But that is not accurate: It is easy to look into the dark; it is very hard to stare into bright light.
— Dennis Prager
Used to talk to myself, I told him "Shut the fuck up"
— MF DOOM
All I've Gotta Do is Be Here Breathing
— Kale
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How’s the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
— David Foster Wallace
I took a look at my thoughts, my appearance, my expressions, my mannerisms and idiosyncrasies and didn't like them. So I stripped myself down, chucked things out and replaced them with a completely new personality. When I heard someone say something intelligent. I used it later as if it were my own. When I saw a quality in someone that I liked. I took it. I still do that. All the time. It's just like a car, man, replacing parts.
— David Bowie
You are not in combat with the people in front of you. Don't get it twisted who your enemies are.
— Kikuri Hiroi
Vivid Memories Turn to Fantasies
— Will Smith
Where do you want it to be?
Who do you want to be?
Any place, so long as it will wrap itself around me gently!
Anyone, so long as I am treated kindly!
— Zepar and Furfur
You must accept that you are the person here, now, and that you cannot become anyone else other than that person. There is no such thing as that rose-colored campus life. Why? Because there is nothing rose-colored in this world.
— Seitaro Higuchi
Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God, the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can't believe it!
— Guy Montag
There's this emperor, and he asks the shepherd's boy how many seconds in eternity. And the shepherd's boy says, "There's this mountain of pure diamond. It takes an hour to climb it and an hour to go around it, and every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on the diamond mountain. And when the entire mountain is chiseled away, the first second of eternity will have passed." You may think that's a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that's a hell of a bird.
— The Twelfth Doctor
He died in an explosion
Of mixed media, and poorly written reviews
— Will Toledo
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
— Dr. Seuss
And so, the all-knowing God has stepped in for the sake of Humans who cannot unlearn, marking out things that should be learned and things that should not be learned.
— Gertrude
Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only God’s echoes and God is Narcissus.
— Hanson Edwin Rose
Rock resonates as the music of the perpetual underdog. Is it really rock if it's sung by life's winners?
— Ryo Yamada
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
— Carl Sagan
I told myself just yesterday that sayings set you free,
But it's hard to see upon untrusty words, you see
— Vasili Igor
But a poem is never actually finished. It just stops moving.
— Sayori
Unfortunately, "accustomed to" here is really synonymous with "damaged by."
— Zampanò
Abandoning your uniqueness is equivalent to dying. So don't write generic lyrics based on other concerns.
— Ryo Yamada
I don't know how deep the hole goes, but if it goes all the way to the center of the earth, then it's probably a long enough fall for me to regret it, recall how my life went, and renew my resolve to die.
— Shijima Tsukishima
It is impossible to outrun your own reflection.
— Celeste
No one walks through life unscathed, and it’s how we react to being tested that becomes our legacy.
— Emigh Cannaday
Two people could engage in actions that would make it appear as though a conversation was occurring, and nobody would have any way of knowing whether or not accurate conversation occurred.
— Shamisen
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.
— Zampanò
It might not connect with too many people, but those it does, it'll hit deeply.
— Ryo Yamada
We all create stories to protect ourselves.
— Johnny Truant
90% of the problem with twitter is treating fictional people like they're real and real people like they're fictional
— Alex Hirsch
More. More more more. More love, more praise, more people telling me that I'm good, always more more more... It's like a disease. Solution, solution, solution.
— Davey Wreden
By objectively, you mean from your viewpoint, right?
— Ushiromia Maria
If you find yourself speaking with a person who does not make sense, in all likelihood, that person is not real.
— The Stanley Parable
People from healthy families—they're out there. Laughing with their friends. But no, not you: you needed a professional.
— Gianmarco Soresi
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
— Leo Tolstoy
In Part 2 of the experiment, the same three groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus (a chamber containing two rectangular compartments divided by a barrier a few inches high). All of the dogs could escape shocks on one side of the box by jumping over a low partition to the other side. The dogs in Groups 1 and 2 quickly learned this task and escaped the shock. Most of the Group 3 dogs—which had previously learned that nothing they did had any effect on shocks—simply lay down passively and whined when they were shocked.
— Wikipedia
Punishment is not something that happens to bad people. It happens to those who cannot stop it from happening. It is laundered pain, not a balancing of scales.
— Porpentine
The axe forgets what the tree remembers.
— African Proverb
Bill read in a biology book about how cells replace themselves over the years; how bodies died and were remade out of interchangeable pieces. It depressed him how foreign his younger self looked to him now, how his body had stolen the identity of this happy dead kid, and with his own life, had made a complete mess of it.
— Don Hertzfeldt
What does a human slowly going insane look like to a corporation? It looks like an additional monthly user.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky
The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.
— George Orwell
There's no devil on one shoulder and angel on the other
They're just two normal people
— Will Toledo
Is it possible to love something so much, you imagine it wants to destroy you only because it has denied you?
— Zampanò
We were all in it together, though. Every stranger you ever met, they were fighting the very same fight you were. Of course, you didn't talk about it with them, but all of us saw that terror, the terror any mortal person has. That terror wasn't natural. No other creature in the universe woke up every morning knowing it was guaranteed to die one day. Just us. Nobody should have to live with that. It's too much, it isn't right. No one ever should have had to bear it.
— Jason Durabo
I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is.
— Satan
If something seems unreasonable, it is because you are doing it wrong! Always assume the maker is competent and has good intentions
— Kalemandu
You can't talk yourself out of loneliness, it doesn't work that way. You can't be the one writing both the questions and the answers, then there's no movement! Then there's no circulation!
— Davey Wreden
Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
— George Orwell
I get irrationally annoyed whenever someone says something along the lines of "It isn't perfect, no [piece of artform] is". Its a nothing statement that reduces art to a stepping stone towards some sisyphean task of trying to find the best ever [thing] instead of caring in what it has to say or does
— KiyoshiWJ
Death is not a destination. It is the absence of one.
— Don Hertzfeldt
If being cool means to feign disinterest over the simple things, there's an alternate term for that, and it's called being miserable.
— Prince Noyno
They say truth stands the test of time. I can think of no greater comfort than knowing this document failed such a test.
— Zampanò
Art is the emanation of Man, Man the Emanation of Nature, God the Grandfather of Art.
— SCP-2614
...it's basically like showing yourself masturbating to other people! I couldn't stand that.
— Masaki Jogasaki
When your heart's on fire, you must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes
— Otto Harbach
Every time I wake up from a dream, my chest is pierced with a sharp feeling of loneliness.
— Shijima Tsukishima
It should be antidepression
As a friend of mine suggested
Because it's not the sadness that hurts you
It's the brain's reaction against it
— Will Toledo
Tree metaphors breathe life into all sorts of things.
Blood vessels and nerves connect in dendrite shapes to distribute energy.
Like composition becoming life.
Strength, knowledge, thought... they stand living against gravity through equal geometries.
Life is beautiful... that is why beautiful girls read books.
— Yomikawa
Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me.
— Salman Rushdie
Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.
— Emily
Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary.
— Mark Z. Danielewski