"They seem to delight in their mediocrity! Yet they dare to tackle Mozart, Schubert! They take up room: fat islands floating in the amniotic fluid of the notes. They imbibe temporarily, but do not understand what they are drinking. After all, people with a herd instinct hold mediocrity in high esteem. They praise it as having great value. They believe they are strong because they are the majority."

The Piano Teacher, Elfriede Jelinek

The linen hanging out to dry in the yard
Is my linen; I know it well.
Looking closer however I see
Darns in it and extra patches.
It seems
I have moved out. Someone else
Is living here now and
Doing so in
my linen.

Bertolt Brecht

"What do I care about all this beauty, when every minute, every second, I must and am forced to know that even this tiny fly that is now buzzing near me in a ray of sunlight, even it participates in this banquet and chorus, knows its place, loves it, and is happy, while I alone am a castaway."

The Idiot, Dostoevsky

"I paint with my back to the world."

Agnes Martin

I'm a fountain of blood / In the shape of a girl / You're the bird on the brim / Hypnotised by the whirl / Drink me, make me feel real / Wet your beak in the stream

Bachelorette, Bjork

The first born got his world torn / I came out of the ice storm / This blood sword is my light source / At the white shores when the night falls / Was my life worth to cry for? / Off like ten pills, now I'm stillborn

Bloodveil/Stillborn, Bladee

"They can hear the mules and pit-horses who live down here, transporting the dug earth and mud barrels to the ladder. When these creatures were lowered down the shaft by rope they had brayed madly, thinking they were being buried alive. Patrick and the others walk silently, remembering the teeth of the animals distinct, that screaming, the feet bound so they wouldn't slash out and break themselves, lowered forty feet down and remaining there until they died or the tunnel reached the selected mark under the lake."

In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje