“Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.”

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 211

"Queen of the Black Coast" (1934)
Source: Conan the Barbarian Omnibus -The Original Stories
Context: He shrugged his shoulders. "I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

“Dragonfly” (p. 199)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

My Reflection in Mulan http://nikkisoohoo.com/blog/2016/11/7/my-reflection-in-mulan (November 7, 2016)

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower