In Steinbeck's words

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

“People like you to be something, preferably what they are.” 

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

“Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself? ”

― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

La vie jusqu'au bout

“ J’aurais voulu être un très grand écrivain, un ascète et en même temps un bandit; j’aurais voulu être un savant qui se sacrifie pour la science et en même temps un aventurier déchaîné, bref tous ces désirs, tout ce qu’on veut obtenir de la vie et qui se contrecarre, s’entretue, font d’un homme quelqu’un qui n’est pas satisfait, qui court après trop de choses, qui n’arrive à rien de véritable. ”

Joseph Kessel

Son coeur est très dur, je pense qu'il est gelé

 “ Tout le plaisir et toute la joie que l'amour peut faire ressentir se paient un jour ou l'autre en souffrance.
Et plus on aime fort, plus la douleur à venir sera décuplée.
Tu connaitras le manque, puis les affres de la jalousie, de l'incompréhension, la sensation de rejet et d'injustice.
Tu auras froid jusque dans tes os, et ton sang fera des glaçons que tu sentiras passez sous ta peau.
La mécanique de ton cœur explosera. ”

“ Elle me donne sans compter, jamais de mesquineries. Je donne aussi, pourtant elle reçoit moins. Peut-être parce que je donne mal. ” 

— Je t’aime de travers parce que je suis un détraqué du cœur de naissance. Les médecins m’ont formellement interdit de tomber amoureux, mon horloge-cœur étant trop fragile pour y résister. J’ai pourtant mis ma vie entre tes mains, parce qu’au-delà du rêve, tu m’as donné une dose d’amour tellement forte que je me suis senti capable de tout affronter pour toi.

Pas la moindre fossette à l’horizon de ses joues.

— Aujourd’hui, je fais tout à l’envers parce que je ne sais plus comment m’y prendre pour arrêter de te perdre et ça me rend malade. 

Mathias Malzieu,
La mécanique du coeur (2007)

Humanisme

“ Mais n'espère rien de l'homme s'il travaille pour sa propre vie et non pour son éternité. ”

 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
Citadelle (1948)

Excellence is subjective

“ Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the earth, to find the perfect man; but each represents only some particular excellence. ”

 Henry David Thoreau,
The landlord (1843)

Shit-scared of the great unknown

I was just like everybody else: shit-scared of the great unknown. 

Desperate to take a little piece of home with me.

The Beach (2000), Danny Boyle

“There's this saying: in an all-blue world, colour doesn't exist... If something seems strange, you question it; but if the outside world is too distant to use as a comparison then nothing seems strange.”

-

“When you develop an infatuation for someone you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. It doesn’t need to be a good reason. Taking photographs of the night sky, for example. Now, in the long run, that’s just the kind of dumb, irritating habit that would cause you to split up. But in the haze of infatuation, it’s just what you’ve been searching for all these years.”

Alex Garland, The Beach

Alors les épines, à quoi servent-elle?

La question est posée à l'aviateur occupé à réparer son avion...

Aquarelle de Saint-Exupéry

- Les épines, ça ne sert à rien, c'est de la pure méchanceté de la part des fleurs ! 

- Oh! 

Mais après un silence il me lança, avec une sorte de rancune: 

- Je ne te crois pas ! Les fleurs sont faibles. Elles sont naïves. Elles se rassurent comme elles peuvent. Elles se croient terribles avec leurs épines... 

Je ne répondis rien. A cet instant-là je me disais: "Si ce boulon résiste encore, je le ferai sauter d'un coup de marteau." Le petit prince dérangea de nouveau mes réflexions: 

- Et tu crois, toi, que les fleurs... 

- Mais non ! Mais non ! Je ne crois rien ! J'ai répondu n'importe quoi. Je m'occupe, moi, de choses sérieuses ! 

Il me regarda stupéfiait. 

- De choses sérieuses ! 

Il me voyait, mon marteau à la main, et les doigts noirs de cambouis, penché sur un objet qui lui semblait très laid. 

- Tu parles comme les grandes personnes ! 

Ça me fit un peu honte. Mais, impitoyable, il ajouta: 

- Tu confonds tout... tu mélanges tout ! 

Il était vraiment très irrité. Il secouait au vent des cheveux tout dorés: 

- Je connais une planète où il y a un Monsieur cramoisi. Il n'a jamais respiré une fleur. Il n'a jamais regardé une étoile. Il n'a jamais aimé personne. Il n'a jamais rien fait d'autre que des additions. Et toute la journée il répète comme toi: "Je suis un homme sérieux ! Je suis un homme sérieux !" et ça le fait gonfler d'orgueil. Mais ce n'est pas un homme, c'est un champignon ! 

- Un quoi ? 

- Un champignon ! 

Le petit prince était maintenant tout pâle de colère. 

- Il y a des millions d'années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d'années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n'est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien ? Ce n'est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs ? Ce n'est pas plus sérieux et plus important que les additions d'un gros Monsieur rouge ? Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n'existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu'un petit mouton peut anéantir d'un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu'il fait, ce n'est pas important ça ! 

Il rougit, puis reprit: 

- Si quelqu'un aime une fleur qui n'existe qu'à un exemplaire dans les millions et les millions d'étoiles, ça suffit pour qu'il soit heureux quand il les regarde. Il se dit: "Ma fleur est là quelque part..." Mais si le mouton mange la fleur, c'est pour lui comme si, brusquement, toutes les étoiles s'éteignaient ! Et ce n'est pas important ça !

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince, Chapitre VII

“J'aurais dû ne pas l'écouter, me confia-t-il un jour, il ne faut jamais écouter les fleurs. Il faut les regarder et les respirer.”

Ibid. Chapitre VIII

Good vs Evil

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?” 

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

 

East of Eden (1955), Elia Kazan

Everything popular is wrong

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.” 

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 2

“To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.” 

Ibid., Chapter 2

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.” 

Ibid., Chapter 3

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Ibid., Chapter 4

Don't fear failure !

Bruce Lee (1940 - 1993)

“Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” 

Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts

Be water my friend

I'm claiming the right to be unhappy

"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"
"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."

[...]

"I'd rather be myself. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly."

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Chapter 6

Brave New World, 1932

No sympathy for the Devil

“In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.” 

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Chapter 9

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Terry Gilliam

Movie Soundtrack (compilation)

Dystopia is the shit

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?” 

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick

Main theme (From Henry Purcell's Funeral of Queen Mary)

Fuck You Sally.

Then, all of a sudden, I got this idea.

“Look,” I said. “Here’s my idea. How would you like to get the hell out of here? Here’s my idea. I know this guy down in Greenwich Village that we can borrow his car for a couple weeks. He used to go to the same school I did and he still owes me ten bucks. What we could do is, tomorrow morning we could drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont, and all around there, see. It’s beautiful as hell up there. It really is.” I was getting excited as hell, the more I thought about it, and I sort of reached over and took old Sally’s goddam hand. What a goddamfool I was. “No kidding,” I said. “I have about a hundred and eighty bucks in the bank. I can take it out when it opens in the morning, and then I could go down and get this guy’s car. No kidding. We’ll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till the dough runs out. Then, when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something. I could chop all our own wood in the wintertime and all. Honest to God, we could have a terrific time! Wuddaya say? C’mon! Wuddaya say? Will you do it with me? Please!”

“You can’t just do something like that Holden”, old Sally says. She sounded sore as hell.

“Why not? Why the hell not?”

J.D. Sallinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 17

Hopeless by vigilantlywaiting (deviantart)

I don't want to die without a few scars

"It's only after you've lost everything," Tyler says, "that you're free to do anything"

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 8

"I just don't want to die without a few scars"
-
"At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe 
we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves"

Ibid., Chapter 6

Fight Club (1999), David Fincher

Pixies - Where is my mind

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. 

This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad in a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight.

Jack London, The   Call of the Wild, Chapter 3