“Understanding is a kind of ecstasy”

“Let's assume there really is no such thing as happiness, no such thing as peace, and no freedom either. But there are kind of attacks of senseless ecstasy. Can this be me?”

“It’s something useless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirit; a splash … free from taint, dependence, soilure of humanity or care for one’s kind; something rash, ridiculous… ecstasy — it’s ecstasy that matters.”

“I've always been one to prefer dimbling down country lanes on me own cod mumbling to myself in some kind of mad ecstasy with a strange feeling of happiness in my step.”

“Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”

“Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.”