all I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country. - Jack Kerouac

If only I had the magic self of babyhood when I remembered what it was like before I was born, I wouldn't worry about death now knowing both to be the same empty dream.

he saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end.

What difference does it make after all? — anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.