Theme
The thin line between genius and insanity. On derangement, obsession, and minds pushed to their limits.
“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”
— The Metamorphosis (1915)
The opening line of Kafka's most famous novella. Its matter-of-fact tone in the face of the impossible is the quintessential Kafkaesque move — the horror is not the transformation, but how ordinary everyone treats it.
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
— Letter to George Eveleth (1848)
From a personal letter written during one of Poe's darkest periods. The inversion — sanity as the horror, madness as the relief — is characteristically Poe.
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
— A Dream Within a Dream (1849)
The final lines of Poe's poem, published the year of his death. A distillation of his lifelong obsession with the boundary between reality and illusion.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
— The Raven (1845)
From the poem that made Poe famous overnight. The narrator stands at the threshold of the unknown — fear and desire perfectly balanced.
“I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”
— Wuthering Heights (1847)
Catherine describes dreams that permanently transform consciousness. Brontë captures the way certain experiences — dreams, loves, losses — don't just happen to us but change what we are.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
— The Crack-Up (1936)
From Fitzgerald's confessional essay series in Esquire. Written during his breakdown, it's a definition of maturity that doubles as a description of artistic vision.
“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (attributed) (1865)
Often attributed to the Cheshire Cat, though the exact phrasing is disputed. The sentiment — that fancy is our defense against a hostile world — runs through all of Carroll's work.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
— Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)
The opening line of Lovecraft's critical essay. It serves as the philosophical foundation of his entire body of fiction — cosmic dread as the primary human response.
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
— The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
The opening of Lovecraft's most famous story. Knowledge here is not power but threat — if we could see the full picture, it would destroy us.
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”
— The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
Lovecraft's anti-Enlightenment manifesto. Curiosity is not a virtue but a danger — the boundaries of knowledge are there to protect us.