"Think of the rivers of blood, spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters... of a fraction of a dot."

Carl Sagan

"Out to sea.
Out to sea.
And in the weightlessness of the deep,
where dreams are fulfilled,
Two wills come together to fulfill a wish,
Your gaze and my gaze
like an echo repeating wordlessly,
Farther out, farther out,
Beyond the other side of everything,
through blood and bones.
But I always wake up
and I always want to be dead,
Your hair forever caressing my lips."

Ramón Sampedro (Javier Bardem) in The Sea Inside

"[...] suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful scream. It came from the room into which Elizabeth had retired. As I heard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the motion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood trickling in my veins and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This state lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed into the room. Great God! Why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the destruction of the best hope and the purest creature on earth? She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair. Everywhere I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this and live? Alas! Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fell senseless on the ground.

When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardour, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend’s grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife."

From Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, on-line edition

"... these are not just academic exercises; we're not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We're dealing with real human beings, who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in -- we as citizens of democratic societies are directly involved in -- and are responsible for. And what the media are doing, is ensuring that we do not act on our responsibilities and that the interests of power are served, not the needs of the suffering people, and not even the needs of the American people, who would be horrified if they realized the blood that is dripping from their hands because of the way they're allowing themselves to be diluted and manipulated by the system."

Noam Chomsky, in the documentary Manufacturing Consent