I first read this book on the plane to my first solo trip to London. It was perfect. It was disturbing. I was glued to my chair. It is hard to find a quote from the book that isn't totally lurid but here is where we are introduced to one of the books central characters:

I began to understand the real excitements of the car crash after my first meeting with Vaughan. Propelled on a pair of scarred and uneven legs repeatedly injured in one or other vehicle collision, the harsh and unsettling figure of this hoodlum scientist came into my life at a time when his obsessions were self-evidently those of a madman.

If you haven't at least attempted to read this before now... shame on you! I have always thought of this as one of those books that you take away from it what you bring to it. For a quote I open to a random page:

CAMPUS OF INTERZONE UNIVERSITY
Donkeys, camels. llamas, rickshaws, carts of merchandise pushed by straining boys, eyes protruding like strangled tounges - throbbing red with animal hate. Herds of sheep and goats and long-horned cattle pass between the students and the lecture platform. The students sit around on rusty park benches, lime stone blocks, outhouse seats, packing crates,oil drums, stumps, dusty leather hassacks, mouldy gym mats. They wear levis-jellabas . . . hose and doublet - drink corn from mason jars, coffee from tin cans, smoke gage (marijuana) in cigarettes made of wrapping paper and lottery tickets . . . shoot junk with a safety pin and dropper, study racing forms, comic books, Mayan codices . . .

A novel, a diary. Deep thoughts on how one can feel the physical aspect of ones own psyche. It begins:

Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and i was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming.

This is Anais Nin's famous prose poem. It epitomizes the type of visceral literature I like best. Here is a quote:

Desire which had stretched the nerve broke, and each nerve seemed to break separately, continuously, making incisions, and acid ran instead of blood. I writhed within my own life, seeking a free avenue to carry the molten cries, to melt the pain into a cauldron of words for everyone to dip into, everyone who sought words for their own pain. What an enormous cauldron I stir now; enormous mouthfuls of acid I feed the others now, words bitter enough to burn all bitterness.

A Nihilistic riddle. A reaction against the moral apathy of his time. He argues that consciousness is suffering, that suffering can become an object rather than a result. As he says in the opening footnote:

The author of these notes and the "Notes" themselves are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless, such persons as the writer of these notes, not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, considering those circumstances under which our society was in general formed. I wanted to expose to the public more clearly than it is done usually, one of the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of the current generation.

This book was the background for my trip to New Mexico a few years back. I had never read a book that so engrossed and inspired me. If you are at all a creative person by the time you finish this novel you will yearn to follow the true vision of your mind against all odds. The story focuses on the lives of New York architects during the boom of the early 1900's trying to build the future, those who stay true to themselves and those who do what is expected of them. The underlying philosophy comes from Ayn Rand's self styled 'objectivism' Here is a quote from where Roark explains why he dynamited one of his buildings rather than see its design compromised:

"Now you know why I dynamited Cortlandt
"I designed Cortlandt. I gave it to you. I destroyed it.
"I destroyed it because I did not choose to let it exist. It was a double monster. In form and in implication. I had to blast both. The form was mutilated by two second-handers who assumed the right to improve upon that which they had not made and could not equal. They were permitted to do it by the general implication that the altruistic purpose of the building superseded all rights and that I had no claim to stand against it.
"I agreed to design Cortlandt for the purpose of seeing it erected as I designed it and for no other reason. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid..."

OK sci-fi/fantasy novel fans! This series of books were my ABSOLUTE FAVORITES way back in the day. The concepts contained in the storyline stay with me to this day. The story of Elric, the Albino Emperor, and Stormbringer, his singing sword from which he gains the power of those he slays. There are good Gods and evil ones but the lines between them are frequently blurred. I can't help but give you this excerpt from the end of the story which all but ruins the ending for you but is my favorite:

Elric of Melnibone, last of the Bright emperors, cried out and then his body collapsed, a sprawled husk beside its comrade, and he lay beneath the mighty balance that still hung in the sky.
Then Stormbringer's shape began to change, writing and curling above the body of the albino, finally to stand astraddle it.
The entity that was Stormbringer, last manifestation of Chaos which would remain with this new world as it grew, looked down on the corpse of Elric of Melnibone and smiled. :Farewell, friend. I was a thousand times more evil than thou!"
And then it lept from the Earth and went spearing upwards, its wild voice laughing mockery at the Cosmic Balance; filling the universe with its unholy joy.