human bones

Guenter Grass

... in our museums we have the bones of the dinosaurs, enormous animals that lived for many millions of years. And when they died, they died in a very clean way. No poison at all. Their bones are very clean. We can see them. This will not happen with human beings. When we die there will be a terrible breath of poison.

flies enter through a closed mouth

Pablo Neruda

..quando el viento recorra
los huecos de tu calavera
te revelará tanto enigma,
susurrándote la verdad
donde estuvieron tus orejas.

from his poem "Por boca cerrada entran las moscas"

favorite sins

Kenny Chesney

It's always your favorite sins
that do you in.

from the song "You and Tequila"

people who don't read

Eugène Ionesco

People who don’t read are brutes. It is better to write than to make war, isn’t it?

evil

Eugène Ionesco

Man is driven by evil instincts that are often stronger than moral laws.

truth in writing

William Trevor

Truth is the most important thing that there is, and if you lose sight of it, your writing will be destroyed in the end.

life

Archibald MacLeish

As one grows older and realizes what a lonely and uncertain place the world is one comes to value above everything else those evidences of human fortitude and dignity and virtue which it has, sometimes, to show.

from a letter to Henrietta Crosby dated Dec. 12, 1929