He was an asshole and he was a coward and his blood is in my blood. Sometimes I feel it happening to me, when I’m arguing with a woman or something, I feel kind of shitty, and I’m not quite JUST. That’s my father’s blood in me, that chicken-shit blood I’ve got in me. It’s a bad feeling.
— Bukowski
Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.
– Kafka
Notes from a Room