The purpose of a story

is to sound an alarm.

– Haruki Murakami

There are men whom one hates

until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armor, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

- Gerald Kersh

Make game of that

which makes as much of thee.

- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald

If we are all made of atoms,

 then we each carry in us the potential to become atom bombs.

Our shamefaced concern

for the opinion of our friends.

- Alan Moore, 'The Birth Caul'

We don’t have love,

we have pain. 

With everyone on board

 we can only sink faster.

For the ear tests words

as the tongue tastes food.

- The Book of Job

No one leaves home

unless home is the mouth of a shark.

Warsan Shire, “Home”

As I ride out into the wide open spaces

Where a cloud and her shadow
Are the main characters
Lost somewhere deep in my memories,
Night is with day.

- Henry Real Bird, Night and day

Design in nature is but a concatenation of accidents,

culled by natural selection until the result is so beautiful or effective as to seem a miracle of purpose. 

- Michael Pollan, but quoted by Chris Lord/Phil Miller

And this felt good to Cora,

the way it felt good to tongue a canker sore.

- Erin Somers, Ten year affair

Our killer’s back again

and they care about us genuinely.

Identity itself

is configured as a condition to be uncovered rather than articulated or expressed.

- Isabel Munson, Mirror of your mind

God in his heaven

 and us in our hell.