Quotes
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But maybe going through that kind of tough, lonely experience is necessary when you’re young. Part of the process of growing up. The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grow stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter. Haruki Murakami, “Yesterday”
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Have faith that the writing process is where you learn rather than where you prove what you already know. Some tips on writing from The New York Times
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Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside…
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What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be…
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It was on this day, during this terrible and wonderful run, that a thought occurred to me, a thought which has never left me: I’ve always considered the question to be ‘Why am I alive? Why am I here? What’s the point of me?’ And to that I say: Who cares! Forget the why… I…
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He felt deeply that California was the only place he could live. It’s the slanting evening light on the hills, the palette, the fundamental beauty. In his very soul, Steve was a Californian. He required the liberty it afforded, the clean slate. He worked under the influence, and the inspiration, of the sublimity of the…
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It speaks to some basic human needs, that there is a tomorrow—it’s not all going to be over in a big flash and a bomb, that the human race is improving, that we have things to be proud of as humans. No ancient astronauts did not build the pyramids—human beings built them because they’re clever…
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We are not ruled by stars; we are composed of their matter. We’re not steered by the movement of spheres; we are heavenly bodies projecting meaning into space and time. We’re not fated by gods and sprites and stories penned by the ancients; we are love in human form writing life upon the land. Laurie…
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Concern for the soul is faulted for making us disregard the body, neglect our responsibilities to the Earth, and deny our kinship with other life forms. We share 90 percent of our genes with mice. Even the lowliest bacterium is our cousin. Why do we persist in imagining that there is some fifth essence in…
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You — as a human being — grow out of this physical universe in just exactly the same way that an apple grows off an apple tree. Alan Watts on the nature of consciousness
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Technology vs Objectivity
Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices – TV, jets, freeways and so on – but I hope it’s been made plain that the real evil isn’t the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes…
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I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home…
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You are this universe. And you are creating it at every moment. Because you see, it starts now. It didn’t begin in the past. There was no past. If the universe began in the past, when that happened it was now. But it is still now and the universe is still beginning now and it’s…
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Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not. Epictetus
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I don’t want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to—I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting…