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- "Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." â Ray Bradbury
- On living in your own world
- On precious things
- On ideas and sharing
- "Life is hard, but we cling to it all the same." â Stanislaus Grumman, The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
- On wanting to be significant but remaining insignificant "By nature, we do not perceive ourselves or others accurately. We magnify the importance of ourselves and diminish that of others. In the beauty of a clear night, however, we look at the stars and feel ourselves small, unimportant, and at peace. On an objective scale, we sense our insignificance. Somehow the realization comforts us. The return of the illusion hurts us, takes our peace away, allows us to magnify slights, rejections, and humiliations as others challenge the illusion of our self-importance with theirs. It is in our human nature that this be so; it is our task to transcend it." -Barry Grosskopf, Hidden in Plain Sight
- On shyness being selfish "I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if Iâm hanging out with you, I canât even tell whether I like you or not because Iâm too worried about whether you like me." -David Foster Wallace
- On a great first person "There are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and youâll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But thereâs still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and theyâre often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone." -Klosterman
- On denials about reality "I donât think that people accept the fact that life doesnât make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it." -David Lynch
- On astronaut food
- On the most vital thing "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan âpress onâ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." -Calvin Coolidge
- On secrets "I would lie, of course. I lied a lot, and with good reason: to protect the truth, safeguard it, like wearing fake gems to keep the real ones from getting stolen, or cheapened by overuse. I guarded what truths I possessed because information was not a thing - it was colorless, odorless, shapeless, and therefore indestructible. There was no way to retrieve or void it, no way to halt its proliferation. Telling someone a secret was like storing plutonium inside a sandwich bag; the information would inevitably outlive the friendship or love or trust in which youâd placed it. And then you would have given it away." â Look at Me, Jennifer Egan
- On learning "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn"
- On boredom Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. - Soren Kierkegaard
- On death "I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." â Mark Twain
- On plan B When all else fails, there's always delusion.
- On life in the 21st century "I think one of the reasons why kids today have quarterlife crises is because weâve seen how little happiness the myth that a house in the suburb with 2.5 kids and a dog and a âcomfortableâ job has afforded our parents and maybe even also our grandparents. We have the self-awareness to realize that just because this is the ideal that has been sold for 60+ years, that doesnât make it the right lifestyle for everyone, that it may not be the right lifestyle for us. At the same time, though, there is little opportunity to have a different kind of life. At every turn, people try to push you back into the mainstream. Get that 9-to-5 job. Buy that house. Snag that husband. Have those babies. Donât forget the dog! / There is also, of course, a fear that if we do something different, weâll end up in a place that we like even less, that weâre even less suited for. Obviously, this is a phenomenon only for those who have the certain degree of economic privilege to make this sort of choice possible to begin with, and for that reason a lot of people treat considering making different choices as frivolous. At the same time, some of the questions that underscore the quarterlife crises so many experience are important. They challenge the idea that the status quo is the right choice, that it should be the only choice and the choice toward which all people should strive. A person having a quarterlife crisis asks: is this lifestyle really all itâs cracked up to be?"
- On vulnerability "When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability⌠To be alive is to be vulnerable." â Madeleine LâEngle
- On being normal "Youâre not crazy. You must emphasize this point and remind yourself of it. Youâre not crazy. And youâre not being coy, or difficult. This isnât about fashionable social detachment, the current trend for woe-is-me, or wanting to be the cool detached outsider. You canât quite catch sight of yourself as you go about your life, thatâs all." â Susan, How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
- On uniqueness "All great and precious things are lonely." â John Steinbeck, East of Eden
- On experience "Let everything happen to you, beauty and terrorâ just keep goingâno feeling is final." â Rainer Maria Rilke
- On the cruel earth "The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you wonât find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." â Richard Dawkins
- On faith against science "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." â Richard Dawkins
- On one's craft "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, itâs just not that good. Itâs trying to be good, it has potential, but itâs not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesnât have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone Iâve ever met. Itâs gonna take awhile. Itâs normal to take awhile. Youâve just gotta fight your way through." â Ira Glass
- On maturity Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity. âFriedrich Nietzsche
- On homesickness "You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isnât really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone. [âŚ] Youâll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and itâs just gone. And you can never get it back. Itâs like you get homesick for a place that doesnât exist. I mean itâs like this rite of passage, you know. You wonât have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, itâs like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe thatâs all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." â Garden State
- On life and punishment People have to face regrets. Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen. When someone attaches unkindness to criticism, sheâs angry. Angry people need to criticize as an outlet for their anger. Thatâs why you must reject unkind criticism. Unkind criticism is never part of a meaningful critique of you. Its purpose is not to teach or to help, its purpose is to punish. Life isnât supposed to be an all or nothing battle between misery and bliss. Life isnât supposed to be a battle at all. And when it comes to happiness, well, sometimes life is just okay, sometimes itâs comfortable, sometimes wonderful, sometimes boring, sometimes unpleasant. When your dayâs not perfect, itâs not a failure or a terrible loss. Itâs just another day." â Barbara Sher
- "To recognize nothing is true, and everything is permitted. That laws arise, not from divinity, but reason. I understand now that our creed does not command us to be free; it commands us to be wise." Assassin's Creed
- On success and satisfaction and the loop âI am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.â -Bette Davies
- On drive, purpose âMy passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.â -Bette Davies
- On being sure of oneself "I was thought to be âstuck up.â I wasnât. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure." â Bette Davis
- On maturity and appreciation Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity. -Nietzsche
- On having nothing left to die
- On being superficial "When we live superficially ⌠we are always outside ourselves, never quite âwithâ ourselves, always divided and pulled in many directions ⌠we find ourselves doing many things that we do not really want to do, saying things we do not really mean, needing things we do not really need, exhausting ourselves for what we secretly realize to be worthless and without meaning in our lives."
- On the privileged and apathy "The more privileged you are, the easier it is to envision human beings as pure individuals, unconnected to other individuals in any way that matters. It sometimes puzzles conservatives that progressives are so concerned with what people think. What is racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, after all, other than a way some people think about some other people? And as long as Iâm free to pursue my own self-interest, what does it matter what others think of me? For someone with a lot of privilege, the rational answer is, âit doesnât matter at all.â The more privileged you are, the less other peopleâs thoughts count."
- On regrets X - Have I done something I regret very much? Never. Never have I hated myself for longer than the morning-after. Some people think guilt should be a lifetime burden and that regret is a knee-jerk reaction. All good if thatâs how you want to live, but with all due respect, I apologize only as much as is needed and anything more is just embarrassing.
oct 2 2011 ∞
feb 21 2024 +
feb 21 2024 +