Dave Sim

I know what you're going to say! 'They are men, and men should be free.' A free man is dangerous to himself and everyone else. Freedom should be left to those who can put it to good use..

I think the more rational explanation is that the excision of a five-to-six-foot leech from the surface of a human body means that that body is going to have more of its own blood in its own veins. Unless the leech finds another body, it is going to go hungry.

Once a profound truth has been seen, it cannot be 'unseen'. There's no 'going back' to the person you were. Even if such a possibility did exist... why would you want to?"

When I start the book, I'm The Writer. The writer bitches for a week about how he never has any fun, he's tired of being funny all the time, and nobody cares about him anyhow. This is followed by a period of deep intense silence, much staring at walls, punctuated by cheery optimism on the order of: 'That's it! I'm Dead! I can't think of an ending!' or 'I'm just going to have to scrap the first ten pages - they're lousy.' Often it is less coherent than that - reduced to the more succinct, 'Garbage! It's all GARBAGE!'"

The problem is maddening. The thing you seek is so close, you feel you could reach out and touch it. You feel it is your immutable destiny to do so. You have not come this far and at such a cost merely to turn around and go back. There is a solution. Of this you are certain. Now, no longer a game of mass, a game of destiny, it has become, instead a contest of wills. You focus on That Which You Seek as if your gaze alone might bring it closer or narrow the distance between you. Just as it feels as if your mind itself will explode from the strain.

These are ideas. I could say that they just came to me, but it would be more accurate to say that I went to them. Ideas - and new connections between ideas - lead you away from commonly held perceptions of reality. Ideas lead you out here. Ideas lead you into the darkness.

You can walk as carefully as you want through a mine field; it is still a mine field. But it's also true that if you step up to the plate worrying that you're going to strike out, the odds are that you're going to strike out. Not doing a large ambitious work because you're convinced that Danger Lurks Around Every Corner, the old 'I might be dead this time next year,' is a waste of the Inner Radiance that found you. It's like life insurance. It's betting against yourself. It's blowing out your own flame before someone beats you to it.

For the first time in your conscious memory; for the first time in fact, since your were a baby; a single tear, full and warm, rolled down your right cheek and you fell into a very deep and entirely dreamless slumber.

Gone is the blinding glow in his hands - gone, too, is the illusion of purity and beauty! In it's place all that remains is mind-numbing, spine-chilling reality!"