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We have to entertain the possibility that there is no reason for something existing; or that the split between subject and object is only our name for something equally accidental we call knowledge; or, an even more difficult thought, that while there may be some order to the self and the cosmos, to the microcosm and macrocosm, it is an order that is absolutely indifferent to our existence, and of which we can have only a negative awareness.

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all.

As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.

I know only one thing. When I sleep, I know no fear, no, trouble, no bliss. Blessing on him who invented sleep. The common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. There is only one bad thing about sound sleep. They say it closely resembles death.

The pain was the world. The mind could not find a place outside it. He could hear the pain, staticky, in his hand and wrist. He closed his eyes again, briefly. He could feel himself contained in the dark but also just beyond it, on the lighted outer surface, the other side, belonged to both, feeling both, being himself and seeing himself.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we’re all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Betrayal. We betray to be loyal. Betrayal is like imagining when the reality isn’t good enough... betrayal as hope and compensation. As the making of a better life. Betrayal as love. As a tribute to our unlived lives... betrayal as escape. As a constructive act. As a statement of ideals. Worship. As an adventure of the soul. Betrayal as travel. How can we discover new places if we never leave home? You were my Promised Land, Poppy. You gave my lies a reason.