"For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures."
(Virginia Woolf)

"Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not."
(Robert M. Pirsig)

"I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”."
(Frida Kahlo)

"Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only."
(Truman Capote)

"Know who I am? . . . 'Good Bye Mister' is my name . . . 'Wind and Dust' is my name . . . 'Never Happened' is my name . . ."
(William S. Burroughs)

"You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself."
(Truman Capote)

"Belief is a meaningless word. What does it mean? I believe something. Okay, now you have someone who is hearing voices and believes in these voices. It doesn't mean they have any necessary reality. Your whole concept of your "I" is an illusion. You have to have something called an "I" before you speak of what the "I" believes."
(William S. Burroughs)

Some kinds of trees make themselves quiet in ways we can see: We say that they ‘sleep.’ At night, they fold up their leaves. If you go lie under them, you’ll have a clear view of the stars in the nighttime sky. But when day comes, they’ll spread out their leaves and give a dense shade. This is a good lesson for the mind: When you sit in meditation, close only your eyes. Keep your mind bright and alert, like a tree that closes its leaves and thus doesn’t obstruct our view of the stars.
(Ajahn Lee)

"I realised either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world.
And of course I was right."
(Jack Kerouac)

"I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of that term; somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law: Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey; I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized allies: my people."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"Wisdom means the skill & ability of the heart alone which must penetrate into everything without exception - even pebbles & grains of sand - that can give rise to attachments"
(Ajahn Mun)

"What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust."
(Salvador Dali)

"Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?"
(Jack Kerouac)

"Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering."
(Gary Snyder)

A person who makes a mistake is better than a person who doesn't act at all, for mistakes can be corrected. But if you don't act, how will you know how to correct yourself? — for you don't know whether you're mistaken or not. The fact that you don't act is a mistake in and of itself.
(Ajahn Lee)

"Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion."
(Gary Snyder)

“Suffering is something to be comprehended. When you comprehend it, you let it go. Why would you want to wear it?”
(Ajahn Dune)

"What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death."
(Frida Kahlo)

"The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them till last."
(Robert M. Pirsig)

The Buddha teaches us to be true in whatever we do — true in being generous, true in being virtuous, true in developing concentration and discernment. Don't play around at these things. If you're true, then these activities are sure to bear you the fruits of your own truthfulness without a doubt
(Ajahn Lee)

"The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow."
(Jack Kerouac)

“Those who have awakened don’t talk of what they’ve awakened to, because it lies above and beyond all words.”
(Ajahn Dune)

"Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away."
(Frida Kahlo)

“There is no longer any place for the kind of idealistic philosophy that removes all reality into the celestial realms and makes temporal existence meaningless…  Man needs to find ultimate sense here and now in the ordinary humble tasks and human problems of every day.”
(Thomas Merton)

"People for the most part don't like the truth. They prefer make-believe instead."
(Ajahn Fuang)

You won't find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"It's good that most people can't remember their previous lives. Otherwise things would be a lot more complicated than they already are."
(Ajahn Fuang)

"The first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."
(Jack Kerouac)

"In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

I've spent my life — from my youth to my old age — wandering as an ascetic, climbing mountains and hills, entering forests and jungles, and yet I still have yet to see a tiger eat anyone alive. I've heard reports, but I've never seen it with my own eyes. I have yet to see a snake kill anyone, or a fierce spirit possess anyone and cause that person to die. What I have seen is that the people of this world are suffering, not from being eaten by tigers or bitten by snakes or killed by elephants, but from their own greed, anger, and delusion. Whatever may be making them suffer, greed, anger, and delusion are the things that destroy them. This is why the Buddha taught that fools destroy themselves as they would destroy others. They destroy themselves by acting in evil and corrupt ways, as we see all around us. They're born as human beings just like everyone else, but their behavior isn't like that of other human beings.
(Ajahn Khamdee)