East of Eden

"I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents…. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins. And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul? ...to a monster, the norm must seem monstrous since everyone is normal to himself…. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish."

"The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears…. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind…if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is."


“Go through the motions, Adam.”
“What motions?”
“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”


"In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man
comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."

Jean-Paul Sartre

"Hell is other people.”

“That God does not exist, I cannot deny, that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”

“Life has no meaning a priori . Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.”

“We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Henry Rollins

“Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.”

“I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.”

"To hate is to show you still care, who needs that, focus on what's really important."

"I see the truth as my shield. As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me. I can't really explain it, but I feel as long as I tell them my dark sides there is nothing they can dig up. If I don't hide anything there is nothing to be scared of."

“I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.”

“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

“I don't want to know. I don't need it. I don't want the information that millions of people have. I don't want to be fed these boring facts and figures. Then you'll become one of the masses. I'd rather starve my mind a bit and have to search out nutrition in stranger places.”

"Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define your character."