"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."
(Jack Kerouac)

"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)

"What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but do what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgements."
(Jack Kerouac)

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
(Jack Karouac)

   "Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."

(Hunter S. Thompson)

"'Crazy' is a term of art; 'Insane' is a term of law. Remember that, and you will save yourself a lot of trouble."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

"I am an addictive personality, they say. A natural slave to passion - and many doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-Risk patient."
(Hunter S. Thompson)

And I admit that I ain't no angel
I admit that I ain't no saint
I'm selfish and I'm cruel but you're blind
If I exorcise my devils
Well my angels may leave too
When they leave they're so hard to find.
(Tom Waits)

"I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born."
(Jack Kerouac)

"I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink..."
(William S. Burroughs)

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see you.
...I only let him out at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
...he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die.
(Charles Bukowski)

"People are all alike, but not at all alike, but in the final analysis, all alike."
(Ajahn Mun)

"Every single one of us - be he a ruler or warrior, rich or poor - is subject to all sorts of physical and mental suffering, especially torments of the mind."
(Dalai Lama)

"All life is but a skull-bone and a rack of ribs through which we keep passing food & fuel -just so's we can burn so furious beautiful."
(Jack Kerouac)

"The lone wolf who tries to run with the pack will forever remain on the outer limits, no matter how welcoming the pack."
(Sujato Bhikkhu)

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'
(Lewis Carroll)

Studying the Dhamma by reading and listening results in perceptions and concepts. Studying the Dhamma by practicing it results in actual levels of Dhamma in the heart.
(Ajahn Dune)

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

"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams."
(Salvador Dali)

We should understand that the Dhamma taught by the Buddha doesn’t lie anywhere far away. As the Canon says, skillful and unskillful dhammas arise right here in the heart. If we want to study the Dhamma, we have to study our own heart. When we’re well acquainted with the heart, we’ll be well acquainted with the Dhamma. When we’re well acquainted with the Dhamma, we’ll be well acquainted with the heart.
(Ajahn Suwat)