#171

“Your fear of death removes the fear.
Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,
Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,
His worshippers; he knows that in the day
Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear,
Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then
Opened and cleared, and ye shall be gods,
Knowing both good and evil as they know.”(id, IX. 702-709)

#170

“O foul descent! That I who erst contended
With Gods to sit the highest, am now constrained
Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime,
This essence to incarnate and imbrute,
That to the heighth of Deity aspired” (id, IX. 163-167)

#169

“(...) In solitude
What happiness, who can enjoy alone,
or all enjoying, what contentment find?” (id, VIII. 364-366)

#168

“But knowledge is food , and needs no less
Her temperance over appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.” (id, VII. 124-130)

#167

“One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidd'n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? And do they only stand
By ignorance, is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?
O fair foundation laid whereon to build
Their ruin!” (id, IV. 514-522)

#166

“Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke
Of servile pomp” (id, II. 255-257)

#165

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n” (id, I. 263)

#164

“Innumerable force of Spirits armed
That durst dislike his reign, and me preferring,
His utmost power with adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heav'n,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what else is not to be overcome?” (Milton, I. 101-109)

MILTON, John (2003). Paradise Lost. London: Penguin Books.

#163

“Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal” (Camus, 2000: 23).

CAMUS, Albert (2000). The Myth Of Sisyphus. Translation by Justin O'Brien. London: Penguin Books.

#162

“It's the price of being a writer. One is dogged by the past – pain, sensations, rejections, all of it. I believe that this clinging to the past is a zealous, albeit hopeless, desire to reinvent it so that one could change it. Doctors, lawyers, and many other stable citizens are not afflicted by a persistent memory. In their way, they might be just as disturbed as you or I, except that they don't know it. They don't delve” (id, 103).

#161

“The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There the novel has no place. In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties” (id, 100).

#160

“I have never written about things as they happened. All my works are indeed chapters from my most personal experience, but nevertheless they are not “the story of my life.” The things that happened to me in my life have already happened, they are already formed, and time has kneaded them and give them shape. To write things as they happened means to enslave oneself to memory, which is only a minor element in the creative process. To my mind, to create means to order, sort out, and choose the words and pace that fit the work. The materials are indeed materials from one's life, but ultimately the creation is an independent creature” (Roth, 2002: 27).

ROTH, Philip (2002). Shop Talk. London: Vintage.

#159

“To disguise nothing, to conceal nothing, to write about those things that are closest to our pain, our happiness; to write about my sexual clumsiness, the agonies of Tantalus, the depth of my discouragement – I seem to glimpse it in my dreams – my despair. To write about the foolish agonies of anxiety, the refreshment of our strength when these are ended; to write about our painful search for self, jeopardized by a stranger in the post office, a half-seen face in a train window, to write about the continents and the populations of our dreams, about love and death, good and evil, the end of the world” (Cheever, 1993: 146-147).

CHEEVER, John (1993). The Journals. London: Vintage.