I'll add a grace note to this piece: one of the most striking moments in Lars von Trier's Melancholia comes when the protagonist Justine (superlatively realized by Kirsten Dunst) says quietly but confidently that there's no life outside Earth. This comes in the second half of the movie as the "Melancholia" disaster slowly builds and she seems to be the only person at peace with it.

As an expression of despair it's very powerful: "We are alone. There is nothing else." I used to live with that....It's not true. We are not stranded here.

~Chara

I tried watching a Spanish dub of King Vidor's The Fountainhead earlier on this evening, and it was entertaining in a corny way but I turned it off after a while. We weren't following the Spanish well enough, all the audio was out of sync by maybe a half-second (this is entertaining in a scene where Dominique Francon drops a Greek-ish statuette from a high window), and also...ugh, do I really need to be exposing myself to Ayn Rand, even filtered through King Vidor and Patricia Neal? ~Chara

Really and truly. I don't remember what joy is like. I have devoted myself, I suppose, to learning to live without it. I've experienced so many cheated hopes...or maybe just foolish hopes. Anyway I've tried to learn how to live with an expectation of ultimate futility. I've managed to impose a certain amount of Stoicism (in the old sense of the word) on myself, a resignation to a life of duty and constant cares, requiring one to make the most of small fleeting pleasures.

~Chara of Pnictogen