"There had been blood. Money and blood. All shoptalk, all expertise had a quality of battle about it, of exultation in the escape from danger. Something was always at stake, every moment you lived. No one could ever really afford to tell the truth. Even after hours, when the store was closed. But sometimes the truth was so good you couldn’t keep it to yourself" - Stanely Elkin, A Bad Man

"... consider how the female body is made to materialize monstrous qualities by systems of power claiming knowledge of its corporeal signs, how these monstrous qualities are marked as secrets, and how these monstrous secrets become a commodity to be dispensed within these same systems of power. " - Sarah Allison Miller, Medieval Monstrosity and The Female

"Pain seems to play a part in the process, and the way in which we gain new knowledge of our organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by which in general we arrive at the idea of our own body" - Freud, The Ego And The Id

"...the menace is more stimulating when you're not confronting it up close" - Kathe Kollwitz

"But seriousness commands us to recognize that it’s the multitude of laws that is responsible for this multitude of crimes."
- Marquis de Sade

"Waving his arms about, slowly. The music’s getting hotter. He stares out over his arm, half in the dark, he looks, his look is, incredibly intense. The fire comes back faint, then stronger. He seems to be wavering on the spot, half hunched-up, his arms close in to his chest. It’s like he’s doing some strange dance but he can’t quite balance" - Fionna Banner, The Nam

"Empty hills, no one in sight,
only the sound of someone talking..."
- Burton Watson, 1971

"You know, to a certain extent I think the formula “the end justifies the means” is valid in music". —D. D. Shostakovich (1968)

"More than ever, some sort of new arrangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrangement – anything to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness that feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or whom I may ever know" - Thomas Ligotti

"It is the custom for the barber to shave the deceased, to powder him, whiten his face and rouge his cheeks and lips, and dress him in a frock coat with patent leather shoes and black trousers, as if going to a ball, may God forbid—this shall not happen to Makso." —Testament of Hatji Makso Despic, drawn up in Sarajevo, 29 March 1921