The cannon thunders… limbs fly in all directions… one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice… its Humanity in search of happiness. – Charles Baudelaire
Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams. – Charles Baudelaire
Any man who does not accept the conditions of human life sells his soul. – Charles Baudelaire
The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai. – J. G. Ballard
The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because its a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play. – Sloane Crosley