And then she thought that you went on living one day after another, and in time you were somebody else, your previous self only like a close relative, a sister or brother, with whom you shared a past.
But a different person, a separate life.
—Charles Frazier, from Cold Mountain


Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man... and give some back.
—Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), Deadwood


It may be that when we longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey.
— Wendell Berry, from "The Real Work"


Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
— W.B. Yeats, "A Drinking Song"


As this child rests upon my arm
So you encircled me from harm.
And you in turn were held by her
And she by her own comforter.

Enclosed, the double mirror runs
Backward and forward, fire to sun.
And as I watch you die I hear
A child's fairwell in my last ear.
— Ann Stanford, "Double Mirror"


The past is the present.
It's the future, too.
— Euguene O'Neill, from A Long Day's Journey Into Night


Well I've got a hand
So I've got a fist
So I've got a plan
It's the best that I can do
Now we say using god's hands
But god doesn't always have the best god damn plans does he?
— Wolf Parade, "Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts"

and finally...

We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.
— Allen Ginsberg, from "Sunflower Sutra"