I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased. - John Fowles

In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was a great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality - history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies.
- The French Lieutenant's Woman

They're beautiful. But sad.'
Everything's sad if you make it so, I said.

She was a mirror that did not lie; whose interest in me was real; whose love was real.