And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help.

–E.A. Poe, “The Pit and the Pendulum”

The voice is a dangerous instrument. Understand me correctly: I don’t mean simply the material quality of the sound, whether it’s high or low, melodious or harsh. I don’t mean the acoustic or prosodic properties. I’m talking about the mystery behind it, the world it comes from… Oh, never mind, fuck the world behind it! There’s always supposed to be a world behind things! What’s it got to do with me?

–Knut Hamsun, Mysterier, 1892

We’re in a time when you can really picture these really tall evil things running at night, just racing. the more freedom you give them, the more they come out and just race and they’re running in every direction now. Pretty soon there’ll be so many of them that you can’t stop them. It’s really a critical time.

–David Lynch on the future, 1992

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