quotes

QUOTES

• “Will you promise me that when you are sad, you’ll think about the sky?” I don t know why he wants me to promise him that but I nod anyway. “But why?”

• “Because.” He turns his face back up to the stars. “The sky is always beautiful. Even when its dark or rainy or cloudy, its still beautiful to look at. It’s my favorite thing because I know if I ever get lost or lonely or scared, I just have to look up and it’ll be there no matter what…and I know it’ll always be beautiful”

• “In a quiet corner at the back, near a row of bunk beds where the surrounding ghosts seemed even more tangible, I found a photo displayed on a wall. Actually, there were a lot of photos of the Holocaust, but this was the one that has never left me. It was in black and white and it showed a short, stocky woman walking down a wide path between towering electrified fences. By the look of the light, it was late in the afternoon, and in the language of those times, she was dressed like a peasant. By chance, there were no guards, no dogs, no watchtowers in the photo, though I m sure they were there – just a lonely woman with a baby in her arms and her other two children holding tight to her skirt. Stoic, unwavering, supporting their tiny lives – helping them as best as any mother could – she walked them towards the gas chamber. You could almost hear the silence, smell the terror. I stared at it, both uplifted and devastated by the stark image of a family and a mother’s endless love.

• “If you want to be free, all you have to do is let go.”

• “Thomas Edison’s last words were It’s very beautiful over there . I don t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”

• “He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness, Damn it, he sighed. How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”

• “The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.”

• “The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned”

• “Before me things created were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

• “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

• “We are what we choose to be” she said. “Let others determine your worth, and you ve already lost, because no one wants people worth more than themselves.

• “Charlie, I told you not to think of me that way nine months ago because of what I m saying now. Not because I didn t think you were great. It’s just that I don t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it, too. I want them to be able to do whatever they want around me. And if they do something I don t like, I ll tell.”

• “Strange how deeper the hole the stronger it draws a man. The fascination that lives on the keenest edge, and sparkles on the sharpest point, also gathers in depths of a fall.”

• “You can only win the game when you understand that it is a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him lose them all.”

• “Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.”

• “As a child there’s a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one … each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.”

• “They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

• “Because I know there are people who say all these things don t happen. And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen. I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here, and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.”

• “Oh God, what is it with mankind? Never happy unless it’s blowing someone up”

• “We re all dead the moment we re born. Just, some of us get there faster than others.”

• “After all, what more does a true genius want? The mind itself is the palace where all the real treasures, the works of art, the indulgences exist.”

• “Perhaps the greatest faculty our minds possess is the ability to cope with pain. Classic thinking teaches us of the four doors of the mind, which everyone moves through according to their need. First is the door of sleep. Sleep offers us a retreat from the world and all its pain. Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind’s way of protecting itself from pain by stepping through the first door. Second is the door of forgetting. Some wounds are too deep to heal, or too deep to heal quickly. In addition, many memories are simply painful, and there is no healing to be done. The saying time heals all wounds is false. Time heals most wounds. The rest are hidden behind this door. Third is the door of madness. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind. Last is the door of death. The final resort. Nothing can hurt us after we are dead, or so we have been told.”

• “It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. A word is nothing but a painting of fire. A name is the fire itself.”

• “Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”

• “You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large,” Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. “But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite.”

• “The Darkest Minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.”

• “And people like you are the reason we have middle fingers.”

• “Strong feelings, especially terror and desperation, leave an imprint on the air that echo back to whoever’s unlucky enough to walk through that place again.”

• “Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.”

• “Before you leave, the fortune-teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.”

• “I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke, and found that life was duty.”

• “They ve never learned the most important rule of cyberspace – computers don t lie, but liars can compute.”

• “Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”

• “I guess that’s what saying good-bye is always like—like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you re in the air, there’s nothing you can do but let go.”

• “There is nothing over which a free man ponders less than death; his wisdom is, to meditate not on death but on life”

• “To light a candle is to cast a shadow”

• “It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears.”

• “Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you. Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.”

• “It is easier to feel the numbness of certainty than live along the burning edge of hope.”

• “What does the future look like?” “I see it in colors,” I said. “A deep blue, fading into golds and reds—like fire on a horizon. Afterlight. It’s a sky that wants you to guess if the sun is about to rise or set.”

• “As bad as everything seems, I think, at its heart, life is good. It doesn’t throw anything at us that it knows we can t handle—and, even if it takes its time, it turns everything right side up again”

• “I ll walk forever with stories inside me that the people I love the most can never hear.”

• “You will be surprised how much more profitable an independent man is than a slave who thinks of nothing more than his next meal.”

• “Do not dash if you only have the strength to walk, and do not waste your time pushing on walls that will not give. More importantly, don t shove where a pat would be sufficient.”

• “To live is to have worries and uncertainties. Keep them inside, and they will destroy you for certain-leaving behind a person so callused that emotion can find no root in his heart.”

• “Answers were always important, but they were seldom easy.”

The slow regard of silent things

• “Love, family, accomplishments—they are all torn away, leaving nothing. What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life. But options are before you; choose one and dedicate yourself to it. The deeds will give you new hope and purpose.”

• “I d imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn t be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.”

• “But you see,” said Roark quietly, “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.”

• “Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. man had no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons - a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and we have comes from a single attribute of man -the function of his reasoning mind.”

• “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”

• “Thousands of years ago the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burnt at the stake he d taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness from the face of the Earth.” -The Fountainhead

• “He was afraid of the coming night, but it was a distant feeling, like knowing you would grow old and die one day.”

• “You can t help everyone, Arlen,” Ragen said, “but you should make every effort to help those you can.”

• “Welcome to adulthood,” Cob said. “Every child finds a day when they realize that adults can be weak and wrong just like anyone else. After that day, you re an adult, like or not.”

• “No one, no one, ever goes to the Creator with all their business complete. We all get a different length of time, but it needs to be enough, regardless”

• “I don t pretend to see the path,” Jona said calmly, “but I know it’s there all the same. One day, we ll look back and wonder how we ever missed it.”

• “Once the apple is ripe,” he murmured to himself, no man can turn it back to a greening.”

• “Why, my luck’s no greater than yours or any man s. You need only sharpen your eyes to see your luck when it comes, and sharpen your wits to use what falls into your hands.”

• “Life’s a forge, say I! Face the pounding; don t fear the proving; and you’ll stand well against any hammer and anvil!” -Pyridan

• “The Meaning of Life is found in the times of your life when it seems stupid to ask the question, what does it all mean?” -Anonymous

• “To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library”

• “Life is filled with secrets. You can t learn them all at once.” -The Lost Symbol

• “Remember that, for a broken promise cannot be mended and new promises cannot grow until the roots of betrayal have turned to dust.”

• “Simple answers to greater questions also create shadows, making it easier to hide the truth of things. Sadly there are many who desire simplicity in all things and they are easy prey for the shadows, for they are easily fooled.”

• “The world offers many lessons to us all,” Carly mused. “What is a mistake but another opportunity to learn another lesson.”

• “Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”

• “History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”

• “Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith―acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school.”

Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”

• “No good deed goes unpunished.”

• “Science tells me God must exist. My mind tells me I ll never understand God. My heart tells me I m not meant to.”

• “But who is more ignorant? The man who cannot define lightning, or the man who does not respect its awesome power?”

• “Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that’s fear.”

• “Don t show it and don t panic. Do like the ducks; on the surface stay calm, and below it paddle like hell”

• “Force a hand, and it will fight you. But convince a mind to think as you want it to think, and you have an ally”

• “Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn’t exist and never shall. There is only now.” ― Christopher Paolini, Eldest

• “The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps. It defies all attempts to capture it with words and rejects all shackles. No matter what you say about it, there is always that which you can t.”

• “Those whom we most love are often the most alien to us.”

• “When you teach them-teach them not to fear. Fear is good in small amounts, but when it is a constant, pounding companion, it cuts away at who you are and makes it hard to do what you know is right.”

• “How terrible,” said Eragon, “to die alone, separate even from the one who is closest to you.” Everyone dies alone, Eragon. Whether you are a king on a battlefield or a lowly peasant lying in bed among your family, no one can accompany you into the void.”

• “But ask yourself this Eragon: If gods exist, have they been good custodians of alagaesia? Death, sickness, poverty, tyranny and countless other miseries stalk the land. If this is the handiwork of divine beings, then they are to be rebelled against and overthrown, not given obeisance, obedience, and reverance.”

• “Always it is thus with my new students, and especially with the human ones; the mind is the last muscle they train or use, and the one that they regard the least. Ask them about swordplay and they can list every blow from a duel a month old, but ask them to solve a problem or make a coherent statement and… well, I would be lucky to get more than a blank stare in return.”

• “Anger has its place, but it will not serve you here, the way of the warrior is the way of knowing. Of that knowledge requires you to use anger, then you use anger, but you cannot wrest forth knowledge by losing your temper.”

• “Misfortune always comes to those who wait. The trick is to find happiness in the brief gaps between disasters.”

• “It is easy to be calm when there is nothing to worry about, Eragon. The true test of your self-control, however, is whether you can remain calm in a trying situation. You cannot allow anger or frustration to cloud your thoughts, not at the moment. Right now, you need your mind to be clear. Have you always been able to remain calm at times like this? The old dragon seemed to chuckle. No. I used to growl and bite and knock down trees and tear up the ground. Once, I broke the top off of a mountain in the Spine; the other dragons were rather upset with me for that. But I have had many years to learn that losing my temper rarely helps. You have not, I know, but allow my experience to guide you in this. Let go of your worries and focus on the task at hand. The future will be what is will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true. I know, Eragon sighed, but it’s not easy. Of course not. Few things of worth are. Then Glaedr withdrew and left him to the silence of his own mind.”

• “We only give credence to that which we can prove exists. Since we cannot find evidence that gods, miracles, and other supernatural things are real, we do not trouble ourselves about them. If that were to change, if Helzvog were to reveal himself to us, then we would accept the new information and revise our position.” “It seems a cold world without something … more.” “On the contrary,” said Oromis, “it is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our own actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do, instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment. I won t tell you what to believe, Eragon. It is far better to be taught to think critically and then be allowed to make your own decisions than to have someone else’s notions thrust upon you. You asked after our religion, and I have answered you true. Make of it what you will.”

• “First, let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered. One may be a free man and yet be bound tighter than a slave. Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don t follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not. “Consider none your superior, whatever their rank or station in life. Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge. Be careful with your money. Hold fast to your beliefs and others will listen.” He continued at a slower pace, “Of the affairs of love … my only advice is to be honest. That’s your most powerful tool to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness. That is all I have to say.”

• “No one thinks of himself as a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.”

• “It doesn’t matter what other people think. The only opiniion that really matters is yours. We are all the writers of our lives. We can make our stories comedies or tragedies. Tales of horror, or of inspiration. Your attitude and your fortitude and courage are what determine your destiny, Nick.… Life is hard and it sucks for all. Every person you meet is waging his or her own war against a callous universe that is plotting against them. And we are all battle weary. But in the midst of our hell, there is always something we can hold on to, whether it’s a dream of the future or a memory of the past, or a warm hand that soothes us. We just have to take a moment during the fight to remember that we re not alone, and that we re not just fighting for ourselves. We re fighting for the people we love.”

• “In the immortal words of Maya Angelou … people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

• “You can blame it all on fate and the universe, but in the end you alone decide if you re going to lie down and let hell take you under, or if you re going to stand strong in defiance of it all with your middle finger raised.”

• “Do not fear that which cannot be seen. For they are lost in between. Tis the ones who come alive That your blood will allow to thrive.”

• “If you muster that courage to stand under fire and not go down, you will amass an inner strength that no one can touch. You won t be another faceless, nameless, forgotten human in a long historical line of the defeated. You will be a steeled warrior, and a force to be forever reckoned with. And beneath the pain that lingers, you will have the comfort of knowing that you are strongest of all. That when others caved and broke, you kept fighting even against hopeless odds.”

• “Life sucked and then they billed you for it. Kind of like how airlines charged you money before you got on a plane so that in the event they screwed up and killed you, they were already paid, and they wouldn t have to give you a refund.”

• “The worst wounds, the deadliest of them, aren t the ones people see on the outside. They re the ones that make us bleed internally.”

• “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life’s too short to worry about what other people do or don t do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.”

• “People aren t just ants rushing around over a crust of bread. Every life, no matter how isolated, touches hundreds of others. It’s up to us to decide if those micro connections are positive or negative. But whichever we decide, it does impact the ones we deal with. One word can give someone the strength they needed at that moment or it can shred them down to nothing. A single smile can turn a bad moment good. And one wrong outburst or word could be the tiny push that causes someone to slip over the edge into destruction.”

• “Life isn´t a puzzle to be solved. It´s an adventure to be savored. Let every challenge be a new mountain to climb, not an obstacle to get in your way and stop you. Yeah, it´ll be hard, but once you reach the summit of it, you´ll be able to see the world for what it really is. And at the top, it never seems to have been as difficult a feat to climb there as you first made it out to be. Most of all, you´ll know that you beat the mountain, and that you rule it. It does not rule you.” ― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Infamous

• “Human will is the strongest will ever created. There are those who are born to succeed and those who are determined to succeed. The former fall into it, and the latter pursue it at all costs. They won t be denied. Nothing daunts them.”

• “It’s never the enemy without who brings you down. It’s always the enemy within.”

• “Guard your back, Nick. It’s the one you don t see coming. The one you trust whose betrayal is most lethal. They know your weakness and they know how to hit the lowest. It’s when your back is turned and your guard is down that they move in for the kill.”

• “His mom always said that trust was something you earned. And it wasn t something you gave easy. Too often, it was a tool your enemies used to hurt you with. Give them nothing, baby. Not until you have no choice. The world is harsh and it is cold. People can be good and decent, but most of them are only out for themselves and they ll hurt anyone they can .”

• “Leaving people behind and forgetting them piece by piece was just the way life worked.

• “The people they were, the people we knew, they re not what’s turning into dirt in that tomb behind his.” He narrowed his eyes until the folds of his skin threatened to squeeze out his sight entirely. “No,” he said. “We re here for a while, in these fleshy shells, and all the while we ask Why? What’s this pain I feel? Why do I feel so cut off from the men around me, from the skies above? “I don t think any of us ever receives the answers to those questions”

• “The human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed; The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed”

• “Sometimes I wonder if we all don t have a blue-steel spring inside us, like that dena of Gorgoth’s coiled tight at the core. I wonder if we don t all go stamping and crashing, crashing and stamping in our own little circles going nowhere. And I wonder who it is that laughs at us”

• “When a game cannot be won, change the game.”

• “Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead Suns and ask if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”

• “Life is this circle. You re born, you live, you die. You come full circle. There is no way around it, that’s how it goes, that’s how it is. We don t control being born and we don t control when we die, but we get to control the part where we live.”

• “Somewhere,” said Elise, drumming her fingers on the table, “there’s a tiny little village that’s missing its idiot.”

• “It’s not the ink and paper that matter, but the hand that holds the pen.”

• “But we have two families in life. The one we re born with that shares our blood. Another we meet along the way that’s willing to give its blood for us.”

• “Hate wears you down and doesn’t hurt your enemy. It’s like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die.”

• “Grief is a doorway through which we pass to realize that the sun is always shining.”

• “Sometimes the only reason why you don t let go of what’s making you sad is because it’s the only thing that made you happy.”

• “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”

• “Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes… hollow.”

• “When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. They say something else and you re expected to just know what they mean.”

• “I always believed I can t be the only one in the world. The only person who was… different and here you are.”

• “The past: a new and uncertain world. A world of endless possibilities and infinite outcomes. Countless choices define our fate: each choice, each moment, a moment in the ripple of time. Enough ripples, and you change the tide… for the future is never truly set.”

• “Charles Xavier: Is this what becomes of us? Erik was right. Humanity does this to us. Professor X: Not if we show them a better path. Charles Xavier: You still believe? Professor X: Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn’t mean they re lost forever. Sometimes, we all need a little help. Charles Xavier: I m not the man I was. Professor X: You re afraid. I remember. Charles Xavier: All those voices… so much PAIN. Professor X: It’s not their pain you re afraid of. It’s yours, Charles. And as frightening as it can be, that pain will make you stronger. If you allow yourself to feel it, embrace it, .it will make you more powerful than you ever imagined. It’s the greatest gift we have: to bear their pain without breaking. And it comes from the most human part of us: hope. Charles, we need you to hope again.”

• “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”

• “So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we ll never know most of them. But even if we don t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”

• “And all the books you ve read have been read by other people. And all the songs you ve loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. and that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing unity.”

• “Standing on the fringes of life… offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.”

• “It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn’t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can t. You have to do things.”

• “No matter how much of yourself you give. No matter how much you bleed. In the end, they believe whatever lie they want to believe about you. They see only the worst, in spite of the fact that you only gave them your best. And there’s nothing you can do or say to change another’s mind. Ever.”

• “We are defined by our enemies—but also we can choose them”

• “Even from the ashes of wickedness and tragedy something of beauty can arise.”

• “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

• “I listened carefully, despite my anger and sorrow, even then my mind was working, looking ahead. “What of the power to protect?” I asked. She closed her eyes. “That is an illusion. There is no power to protect, only to destroy and create anew. Protection is a result of the mind and clever use of power to manipulate the actions of those that would harm you, but it is not a result of power itself.”

• “It’s like pain,” I said continuing. “It helps warn you, so you don t hurt yourself more. A mother’s pain comes from the fear that we might be hurt, and because of that, she gets angry with us, but that anger serves the same purpose. It often keeps us from doing something stupid and hurting ourselves.”

• “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

• “People are funny. The longer you are around them, the more you start to realize that everyone makes the same motions over and over again. We all want to believe that every day is different, that every day we change, but really, it seems that certain things are coded into us from the very beginning.”

• “A ruler must be of all his people, for one can only rule what one knows.”

• “Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”

• “Some say a dog or a horse as if every one of them is like every other. I ve heard a man call a mare he had owned for seven years it as if he were speaking of a chair. I ve never understood that. One does not have to be Witted to know the companionship of a beast, and to know that the friendship of an animal is every bit as rich and complicated as that of a man or woman.”

• “Do you really think things are so simple? Do you really think you can blame all your tomorrows on your yesterdays? It’s your life. It will be whatever you make it.”

• “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don t rhyme, and some stories don t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”

• “To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”

• “Religion has convinced people that there’s an invisible man … living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn’t want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money.”

• “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”

• “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace

• “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”

• “You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”

• “I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we re actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we re suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before.”

• “That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

• “If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.”

• “Because I have shown my hands to be empty you must now expect not only that an illusion will follow, but that you will acquiesce in it!”

• “No one expects a good-humored man or a kind woman to be good-humored or kind every day and every moment—yet they re appalled when people are trustworthy for a month or a year and then they aren t for an hour or a day.”

• “To be sociable,” IdrisPukke continued, “is a risky thing—even fatal—because it means being in contact with people, most of whom are dull, perverse and ignorant and are really with you only because they cannot bear their own company. Most people bore themselves and greet you not as a true friend but as a distraction—like a dancing dog or some half-wit actor with a fund of amusing stories.”

• “No one of real intelligence will accept anything just because some authority declares it to be so. Don t accept the truth of anything you have not confirmed for yourself.”

• “You should never tell your best friend anything you wouldn´t be prepared to tell your worst enemy.”

• “Feeling sorry for yourself is a universal solvent of salvation.”

• “Only inferior minds speak or write in order to discover what they think.”

• “Don t think of it as a lie, think of it as the truth under imaginary circumstances.”

• “The mere adding of years to life is not living.”

• “Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same colour everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.”

• “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

• “When I die, I want to go peacefully like my grandfather did–in his sleep. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car.”

• “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn t understand life.

• “Worry is like a rocking chair, it will give you something to do, but it won t get you anywhere.

• “I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.”

• “The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.”

• “You see things; and you say “Why?” But I dream things that never were; and I say “Why not?”

• “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.”

• “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

• “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

• “I m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can t handle me at my worst, you sure as hell don t deserve me at my best.”

• “Fairy tales are more than true–not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”

• “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

• “In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”

• “If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.”

• “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”

• “Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn t be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn’t know that so it goes on flying anyway.”

• “Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor place to stay.”

• “I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.”

• “All mothers have intuition. The great ones have radar.”

• “He who angers you conquers you.”

• “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.”

• “Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music.”

• “I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

• “Books were safer than other people anyway.”

• “Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don t. I don t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”

• “I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”

• “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”

• “How can you be happy in this world? You have a hole in your heart. You have a gateway inside you to lands beyond the world you know. They will call you, as you grow. There can never be a time when you forget them, when you are not, in your heart, questing after something you cannot have, something you cannot even properly imagine, the lack of which will spoil your sleep and your day and your life, until you close your eyes for the final time, until your loved ones give you poison and sell you to anatomy, and even then you will die with a hole inside you, and you will wail and curse at a life ill-lived.”

• “I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

• “Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.”

• “Just go with it. It won t hurt. I stared at him. Adults only ever said that when it, whatever it happened to be, was going to hurt so much.”

• “Grown-ups don t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they re big and thoughtless and they always know what they re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”

• “The whole big, complicated world was simple and graspable and easy to unlock. I would stay here for the rest of time in the ocean which was the universe which was the soul which was all that mattered. I would stay here forever.”

• “I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn´t me, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? If I looked inward I would see only infinite mirrors staring into myself for eternity”

• “I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”

• “Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not.”

• “I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”

• “Do or do not. There is no try.”

• “The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.”

• “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness. Nothing more.”

• “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

• “If I got rid of my demons I d lose my angels too.”

• “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven.”

• “Studies suggest that risk aversion stems from fear of failure. Fear of failure or fear of losing the staus quo, fosters inaction. In other words, fear is the enemy of change and innovation.”

• “Words and the thoughts behind them may be clever, perhaps inspired, but still there can be enough of them. Then it’s better to take it all in silently. We don t need to describe everything we experience, or to express all that we learn. Words are mere shadows. If we focus on them we may lose sight of the reality they try to imitate.”

• “Like the keel of a boat that’s unaffected by the waves on the sea. That’s how the human mind should be – calm in whatever turmoil surrounds it, confident even in a rain of urgent questions. The answers are to be found in that calm.”

• “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.”

• “There can be a universe without any gods to rule it, but not one without laws for it.”

• “I ve made mistakes in the years since I was a boy. I tried to learn from them, but it isn t always enough.”

• “Life goes on. Those who dwell on the past have no future.”

• “They say the past is etched in stone, but it isn t. It’s smoke trapped in a closed room, swirling changing. Buffeted by the passing of years and wishful thinking. But even though our perception of it changes, one thing remains constant. The past can never be completely erased. It lingers. Like the scent of burning wood.”

• ” Big world, not all of it flowers and sunshine. And the only way guys like you and me can survive is to grab it by the throat and never let go.”

• “You get what you deserve.” It’s an old saying. One that survived the years, because it’s true. For the most part. But not for everyone. Some get more than they deserve. Because they believe they aren t like everyone else. That the rules, the ones people like me and you, the people that work and struggle to live our lives, just live, don t apply to them. That they can do anything and live happily ever after, while the rest of us suffer. They do this from the shadows. Shadows that we cast with our indifference. With a pervasive lack of interest in anything that doesn’t directly affect us, we, in the here and now. Or maybe it’s just the shadow of weariness. Of how tired we are, struggling to claw our way back to a middle class that no longer exist, because of those who take more than they deserve. And they keep taking, until all that’s left for the rest of us is a memory of how it used to be before the corporations and the bottom line decided we didn t matter anymore. But we do. ”

• “There is a wide gulf between inaction and murder, Matthew. Another man’s evil does not make you good. Men have used the atrocities of their enemies to justify their own throughout history. So the question you have to ask yourself is are you struggling with the fact that you don t want to kill this man, but have to? Or that you don t have to kill him, but want to?”

• “Just because someone is important to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that, that person is good. Even if you knew that person was evil… People cannot win against their loneliness.”

• “Even the strongest of opponents always has a weakness.”

• “Rejection is a part of any man’s life. If you can t accept and move past rejection, or at least use it as writing material - you re not a real man.”

• “If you don t share someone’s pain. You can never understand them.”

• “Once you question your own belief, it’s over.”

• “It is only through the eyes of others that our lives have any meaning.”

• “Just by living, people hurt others without even realizing it. So long as humanity exists, hate will also exist. There is no peace in this cursed world. War is just a crime paid for by the pain of the defeated…”

• “People’s lives don t end when they die. It ends when they lose faith.”

• “If love is just a word, then why does it hurt so much if you realize it isn t there?”

• “Humans… Do humans have a purpose when they are born? I have been wondering recently. Because they are born, do they have an important duty? The meaning of being born… For humans to find that answer… It is the one freedom God gave them.”

• “Wake up to reality! Nothing ever goes as planned in this world. The longer you live, the more you realize that in this reality only pain, suffering and futility exist.”

• “Sometimes you must hurt in order to know, fall in order to grow, lose in order to gain because life’s greatest lessons are learned through pain.”

• “A place where someone still thinks about you is a place you can call home.”

• “The hole in one’s heart gets filled by others around you. Friends won t flock to someone who abandons the memory of his friends and gives up on the world just because things don t go the way he wants them to. That won t help fill the hole in your heart. And people won t help those who run away and do nothing. As long as you don t give up, there will always be salvation.”

• “When people are protecting something truly special to them, they truly can become… as strong as they can be.”

• “Regardless of our limitations, we can always be of some use. Our power may seem insignificant… but it may just prove to be useful in the grand scheme of things. Stay focused. Never avert your eyes, because if an opening arises, even our insignificant power may be enough to determine the fate of the world. Which is why everyone must stay alert and ready to strike at any moment!”

• “The things that are most important aren t written in books. You have to learn them by experiencing them yourself.”

• “In life, nothing good comes out of hurrying.”

• “Maybe, just maybe, there is no purpose in life… but if you linger a while longer in this world, you might discover something of value in it.”

• “While you re alive, you need a reason for your existence. Being unable to find one is the same as being dead.”

• “A wound of a heart is different from a flesh wound. Unlike a flesh wound, there are no ointments to heal it, and there are times when they never heal.”

• “The best way to escape reality without running is smiling even if it is obviously fake.”

• “Often people have it wrong, mistakenly believing…that showing mercy to an enemy is kindness. They spare the foe whose life is in their hands… But don t you see? It’s an empty existence… to go on living… alone and unloved… when defeat’s already cost you your dream!”

• “We are humans, not fish. We don t know what kind of people we truly are until the moment before our deaths. As death comes to embrace you, you will realise what you are. That’s what death is, don t you think?”

• “Did you really think, just because you deny the existence of a world that you don t understand, it wouldn t exist?”

• “Director Gordon: See, that’s my concern… he’s not taking this seriously. Tyler Gage: Well, I m sorry… it’s just that you guys talk about dancing like it’s rocket science or something.”

• “Brett Dolan: When someone hands you your dreams, you take it, you don t ask questions. Nora: I would. Brett Dolan: You think you would.”

• “Andie: I remember the first time I saw someone move like they were from another planet, I couldn t keep my eyes away. I was little mom took me to a jam session in the neighborhood, it started off small but word spread and soon some of the best dancers around were showing up to compete in something they eventually called the streets. It became home, I got a front row seat to history. I wanted to glide and spin and fly like they did, but it didn t come easy. My mom would tell me don t give up, just be you, because life’s too short to be anybody else. She was right. When I was 16 my mom got sick and in a couple months she was gone. Everything changed, including the streets.”

• “Moose: You know, some famous guy once said: “To Travel is better than to arrive.” And I was like, “What?” Because I used to think that there was only one path to take to where you want to be in life. But, if you choose that one path, it doesn’t mean you have to abandon all the other ones.I realize it actually what happens along the way that counts; the stumbles, the falls, and the friendships. It’s the journey and not the destination. You just gotta, I guess, trust that the future is gonna work itself out like it’s supposed to,”

• “Moose: [from trailer] People dance because dance can change things. One move, can bring people together. One move, can make you believe like there’s something more. One move, can set a whole generation free.”

• “Alicia: How big is the universe? Nash: Infinite. Alicia: How do you know? Nash: I know because all the data indicates it’s infinite. Alicia: But it hasn t been proven yet. Nash: No. Alicia: You haven t seen it. Nash: No. Alicia: How do you know for sure? Nash: I don t, I just believe it. Alicia: It’s the same with love I guess.”

• “Perhaps it is good to have a beautiful mind, but an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart.”

• “Don t expect much and you won t be disappointed.”

• “There’s no way someone who can t even protect himself can protect anyone else, is there?”

• “Human relationships are chemical reactions. If you have a reaction then you can never return back to your previous state of being.”

• “Whose fault is it that things ended up like this? Coincidence? An accident? Fate? There’s no such thing as fate. It’s simply a combination of one circumstance and the next. And who is it that creates those circumstances? Who is it? It’s you.”

• “It’s not because we can t take vengeance that we should feel sorry. The real reason to feel sorry… is when one is hung up on revenge and can t live their own life.”

• “You believe that the strong exist to cull the weak. To use them as food. But you are mistaken … The strong exist, not to feed off of the weak, but to protect them!”

• “Perhaps the distant part of the sky always seems clearest, so that we will always strive to reach it.”

• “Who falls for who depends completely on the person. If there are a hundred people, there are a hundred ways to love… There never is one absolute form of love.”

• “You can die anytime, but living takes true courage.”

• “You ll only realize that you truly love someone if they already caused you enormous pain. Your enemies can never hurt you the way your loved ones can. It’s the people close to your heart that can give you the most piercing wound. Love is a double-edged sword, it can heal the wound faster or it can sink the blade even deeper.”

• “The dead don t desire revenge, but the happiness of the living.”

• “Fate is never thwarted. What has happened has happened because Fate willed it thus—if, indeed, there is such a thing as Fate and if men’s actions are not merely a response to other men’s actions.”

• “So if I asked you about art, you d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I ll bet you can t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You re a tough kid. And I d ask you about war, you d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you ve never been near one. You ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I d ask you about love, you d probably quote me a sonnet. But you ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms

• “visiting hours” don t apply to you. You don t know about real loss, cause it only occurs when you ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you ve ever dared to love anybody that much.”

• “If you only focus on a leaf, you will miss the entire tree; if you focus only on a leaf, you might miss the entire forest. Thus, you must focus on things in their entirety.”

• “When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”

• “You could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.”

• “Because that is what happens when you try to run from the past. It doesn’t just catch up: it overtakes, blotting out the future, the landscape, the very sky, until there is no path left except that which leads through it, the only one that can ever get you home.”

• “When you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn t see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete”

• “I thought of everything being washed away, again and again. We make such messes in this life, both accidentally and on purpose. But wiping the surface clean doesn’t really make anything any neater. It just masks what is below. It’s only when you really dig down deep, go underground, that you can see who you really are.”

• “The monks used to say that hope is just a distraction.”

• “Harsh words won t solve problems, action will.”

• “Destiny? What would a boy know of destiny? If a fish lives its whole life in this river, does he know the river’s destiny? No! Only that it runs on and on out of his control. He may follow where it flows, but he cannot see the end. He cannot imagine the ocean.”

• “You think you re any different from me, or your friends, or this tree? If you listen hard enough, you can hear every living thing breathing together. You can feel everything growing. We re all living together, even if most folks don t act like it. We all have the same roots, and we are all branches of the same tree.”

• “Time is an illusion, and so is death.”

• “You must never give into despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road, and you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.”

• “It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it becomes rigid and stale.”

• “No matter how things seem to change. Never forget who you are.”

• “But love is a form of energy, and it swirls all around us.”

• “The greatest illusion of this world is the illusion of separation. Things you think are separate and different are actually one and the same. We are all one people, but we live as if divided.”

• “Protection and power are overrated. I think you are very wise to choose happiness and love.”

• “There are reasons each of us are born. we have to find those reasons.”

• “Sometimes life is like this dark tunnel, you can t always see the light at the end of the tunnel, but if you just keep moving, you will come to a better place.”

• “It’s impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.”

• “Nothing ever happens the way you imagine it will. But then again, if you don t imagine, nothing ever happens at all.”

• “You don t get to choose if you get hurt in this world but you do have some say in who hurts you.”

• “What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person.”

• “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, to how it holds you to a place.”

• “Music should flow like a language. Changing a single note can turn joy to sorrow.”

• “You will look at what I have done and say, Of course - why not - they are all animals. They have slaughtered each other for centuries. But the truth is, I m not a monster. I m a human man - I m just like you, whether you like it or not. For years, we have tried to live together, until a war was waged on us, on all of us: a war waged by our own leaders. And who supplied the Serb cluster bombs, the Croatian tanks, the Muslim artillery shells that killed our sons and daughters? It was the governments of the West who drew the boundaries of our countries - sometimes in ink, sometimes in blood - the blood of our people. And now you dispatch your peacekeepers to write our destiny again. We can never accept this peace that leaves us with nothing but pain, pain the peacemakers must be made to feel. Their wives, their children, their houses and churches. So now you know, now you must understand. Leave us to find our own destiny. May God have mercy on us all.”

• “It was being under that Lace loved most. The lightness of her own body, the water trying to lift her toward the surface. The silhouettes of the underwater trees, like a forest on a fall night. How everything looked blurred like she was seeing it through stained glass. How water that had felt cold when she slid into the river now felt as warm as her own body. Even the sharp sting in her lungs as she swam out of view to take a breath.”

• “Regret is a powerful poison. The more you harbor those thoughts, the harder it is to move on.”

• “If you begin to regret, you’ll dull your future decisions and let others make your choices for you. All that’s left for you then is to die. Nobody can foretell the outcome. Each decision you make holds meaning only by affecting your next decision.”

• “I haven t lived all that long yet, but there is something I firmly believe in. The people who have the ability to change something in this world, all without exception, have the guts to abandon things important to them if they have to. They are those who can abandon even their humanity.”

• “People who can t throw something important away, can never hope to change anything.”

• “This world is merciless, and it’s also very beautiful.”

• “It’s because I fail … I have the strength to keep fighting … and that type of strength is real strength …”

• “There are many types of monsters that scare me: Monsters who cause troubles without showing themselves, monsters who abduct children, monsters who devour dreams, monsters who suck blood… and then, monsters who tell nothing but lies. Lying monsters are a real nuisance: They are much more cunning than others: They pose as humans even though they have no understanding of the human heart; they eat even though they ve never experienced hunger; they study even though they have no interest in academics; they seek friendship even though they do not know how to love. If I were to encounter such monsters, I would likely be eaten by them… because in truth, I am that monster.”

• “Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.”

• “There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that’s a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It’s damaged but it’s there. Don t let them take it from you.”

• “Fear can be good, Laia. It can keep you alive. But don t let it control you. Don t let it sow doubts within you. When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.”

• “Giving into the pain and thinking you want to die just means you ve been spoiled by life. If you don t want to die, then don t act spoiled. Suffer through life; crawl through life. Stick it out till the very end. If you still want to die after that, come find me. I ll end you.”

• “It doesn’t matter whether it’s wrong or not, the thing is… What’s important is memory…The memory that you can t forget for the rest of your life…”

• “If you let yourself get depressed, you will be making light of the people who follow and trust you.”

• “Happiness is like glass. It may be all around you… Yet be invisible. But if you can change your angle of viewing a little, then it will reflect light more beautifully than any other object around you.”

• “I ll leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s me.”

• “Let’s say I posed this question to you: “Can all human souls be bought with money or not?” Now remember, the keyword here is “all”. The answer is “There are times when you can buy them, and other times, not,” right? The human being… sometimes he ll uphold his pride and conscience even if he’s offered ten billion yen, and other times he ll murder someone over one yen.”

• “People with talent often have the wrong impression that things will go as they think.”

• “Hard work betrays none, but dreams betray many.”

• “Life is basically like a soap bubble. It rides on the wind, flying here and there, …And before you realize it, pop! It’s gone. When it’s about to disappear, you think that you could ve flown a bit higher.But by the time, it’s already too late.”

• “People are like dice, a certain Frenchman said that. You throw yourself in the direction of your own choosing. People are free because they can do that. Everyone’s circumstances are different, but no matter how small the choice, at the very least, you can throw yourself. It’s not chance or fate. It’s the choice you made.”

• “Only hope can give rise to the emotion we call despair. But it is nearly impossible for a man to try to live without hope, so I guess that leaves Man no choice but to walk around with despair as his companion.”

• “Man fears the darkness, and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire.”

• “We are all like fireworks. We climb, shine, and always go our separate ways and become further apart. But even if that time comes, let’s not disappear like a firework, and continue to shine forever.”

• “Being alone and being lonely are two different things.”

• “Do not allow yourself to be blinded by fear and anger. Everything is only as it is.”

• “Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don t throw them away. Whatever you lose, you’ll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.”

• “Thanks to these eyes…I came to understand how cruel and despicable people can be. But that also allowed me to appreciate true beauty. All you have to do is appreciate things from a different perspective Once I realized the things we take for granted are really miracles, I came to see everything in it’s precious, empheral beauty. … I love this world.”

• “It’s never something huge that changes everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you re busy focusing on the big picture.”

• “Imma do what I want, whatever. Imma rage til the dawn, all nighter. Don t hold your breath. You know I ll sleep when I am dead.”

• “We are giants. We are bigger than a monster. Every second we are taking back the power on the run till we get a fucking answer. Try to hold us down but we re only getting stronger.”

• “They say pain is an illusion, this is just a bruise. And you are just confused. But I am only human. I could use a hand sometimes. I am only human.”

• “In this world, perfection is an illusion. Regardless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. …After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair.”

• “A different species a different set of values a world completely unlike your own. There is a feeling you can only get when you meet the unknown and open your mind.”

• “If you want to know someone, start by finding out what makes him angry.”

• “Time is going really faster than you think. That second just passed now, get up, pack the bag, get lost…”

• “Life is something that no one can teach you,You have to learn it.”

• “People seem weak, but they re strong. They seem strong, but they re weak. No matter how much you cry, you still have to sleep. And you even get hungry. You suddenly realize you re doing the same things you did yesterday. You say hi to your friends and smile just like you did yesterday. Life goes on as if nothing ever happened… I want to go somewhere… Anywhere… Somewhere where I can forget everything. …where I ll forget everything …and be reborn.”

• “Being sorry is far worse punishment than being dead, everybody dies… very few people ever feel truly sorry for the bad things they ve done.”

• “Because happiness is so hard to find. Once you find it, you better hang on tight. Or you lose it.”

• “I want you to give her a possibility,” she told him, looking at my necklace again. “And that’s what a key represents. An open door, a chance.”

• “There was something striking about a single key. It was like a question waiting to be answered, a whole missing a half. Useless on its own, needing something else to be truly defined.”

• “My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn’t happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they re important ones … you might as well hold on to them.”

• “Hey angel… Do you know the reasons why? We look up to the sky? Hey angel… Do you look at us and laugh When we hold on to the past?”

• “Who’s gonna be the first one to compromise Who’s gonna be the first one to set it all on fire Who’s gonna be the last one to drive away Forgetting every single promise we ever made.”

• “Youth is like diamonds in the sun, And diamonds are forever.”

• “Anybody’s got the power They don t see it cause they don t understand Spin around and round for hours You and me, we got the world in our hands.”

• “I didn t need you, you idiot. I picked you. And then you picked me back.”

• “But isn t it also that on some fundamental level we find it difficult to understand that other people are human beings in the same way that we are? We idealize them as gods or dismiss them as animals.”

• “You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you re trying to listen to.”

• “It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.”

• “Home wasn t a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.”

• “Silence is so freaking loud.”

• “The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.”

• “What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn t just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger. Cora was right—we had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn t expect them to be. You couldn t make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.”

• “Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete—like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.”

• “It’s a lot easier to be lost than found. It’s the reason we re always searching, and rarely discovered.”

• “Isn t every relationship based off selfishness?”

• “Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It’s so easy in the past tense.”

• “I was beginning to see, though, that the unknown wasn t always the greatest thing to fear. The people who know you best can be riskier, because the words they say and things they think have the potential to be not only scary but true, as well.”

• “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

• “My life will not follow a fairy tale, and that’s okay. My life is reality. And in my reality people don t fall in love and get married and live happily ever after, because life is complicated. And messy. ”

• “Sometimes he wondered if man’s instincts had changed in that time and always concluded that they hadn t. At least in the basic, most primal ways. As far as he could tell, man had always been aggressive, always striving to dominate, trying to control the world and everything in it.” “Poetry, she thought, wasn t written to be analysed: it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.”

• “You are the answer to every prayer I ve offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don t know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have.”

• “We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretence of understanding. We paper over the voids in our comprehension with science or religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us. The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.”

• “The bladder-pipe, a local Highlands speciality, is to music what warthogs are to mathematics. Largely unconnected.”

• “God is not some omnipotent authority looking down from above, threatening to throw us into a pit of fire if we disobey. God is the energy that flows through the synapses of our nervous system and the chambers of our hearts! God is in all things!”

• “Your afterlife is what you expect it to be, what the thousands, the millions around you expect, what legend builds, told, retold, refined, evolving. In this place, amongst the sands, they fashion themselves a different paradise and different paths to it, some dark, some light. All of it is fabrication, constructed over the reality my people lived in. Whatever waited for a man after his death in those times, it was not mentioned in our calculations. Our priests, when they could find anyone to listen, described something more subtle, more profound, and more wonderful.” “Ignorance is indeed bliss.”

• “No one is ever kind or generous without expecting something in return. I know you will use me eventually like everyone else.”

• “So don t be too sad. Being incomplete means that you have the potential to grow into an infinite number of things.”

• “Everyone gets a wound that never heals and no one should bother. No matter how sound and secure that person seems… There’s no way of telling what will happen if you cross the line.”

• “When people fall into despair even getting through their daily lives can be like torture. And since it involves a whole mix of confusing emotions, each person’s reaction to different situations can be diverse.”

• “A precious thing is like something that’s a part of you. Like your heart. Finding a precious thing or a person is a very happy thing. But it can also be scary. Everyone has got atleast one precious thing. And there may be a difference between having something precious and being precious to someone but they are not separate things.”

• “Is the horizon far away? Not at all! Man is at the horizon, how can the horizon be far away? What colour is the bright moon? It is blue; and like the ocean, blue, deep and sorrowful. Where is the bright moon? It is in his heart; his heart is the bright moon. What about his sabre? His sabre is in his hand! What kind of blade is that? His sabre is as broad and as lonely as the horizon, as pure and sorrowful as the bright moon; even with a flash of steel, some times it is as if it is empty. Empty? Empty and illusional, as if it never exists, yet present everywhere. But the speed of his sabre does not appear to be very swift. How can a sabre that is not swift be invincible under the heavens? This is because his sabre has gone beyond the limits of speed! Where is he? He has not returned, but his heart is already broken. Where is the path of his return? The path is right in front of him. Cannot he see the path? He is not looking for it. So he cannot find the path? Perhaps not now, but he will find it sooner or later. Willl he find it for sure? Definitely!”

• “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll.I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

• “Love was selfish, wasn t it? It made honest men want things they had no right to. It cocooned one from the rest of the world, erased time itself, knocked away reason. It made you live in defiance of the inevitable. It made you want another’s mind, body; it made you feel as if you deserved to own their heart, and carve out a place in it.”

• “I didn t smile because I made friends. I made friends because I smiled at them.”

• “Each moment is fragile and fleeting. The moment of the past cannot be kept, however beautiful. The moment of the present cannot be held, however enjoyable. The moment of the future cannot be caught, however desirable. But the mind is desperate to fix the river in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment.”

• “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

• “A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.”

• “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

• “Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.”

• “Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question.”

• “Do you have the patience to wait Till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving Till the right action arises by itself?” “He who stands on tiptoe doesn’t stand firm. He who rushes ahead doesn’t go far. He who tries to shine dims his own light. He who defines himself can t know who he really is. He who has power over others can t empower himself. He who clings to his work will create nothing that endures.”

• “If you want to accord with the Tao, just do your job, then let go.”

• “Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity. If you don t realize the source, you stumble in confusion and sorrow. When you realize where you come from, you naturally become tolerant, disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king. Immersed in the wonder of the Tao, you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.”

• “He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.”

• “There is no illusion greater than fear.”

• “No matter how bad a state of mind you get into, if you hold out over the long run, the clouds will disappear and the autumn winds will cease. That is a fact.”

• “Life isn t just doing things for yourself. It’s possible to live in such a way that other people’s happiness, makes you happy too.”

• “Everyone smiles, when they are with you. Please… from now on, go and help people in my place. Share your happiness with them.”

• “Everybody can fight. It’s just a choice of whether you should.”

• “Death comes suddenly and life is fragile and brief. No one can alter this, either by prayers or spells. Children cry about it, but men and women do not cry. They have to endure.”

• “The wind stirred the ancient cedars; the night insects kept up their insistent music. It would always be like this, I thought, summer after summer, winter after winter, the moon sinking towards the west, giving the night back to the stars, and they, in an hour or two, surrendering it to the brightness of the sun. The sun would pass above the mountains, pulling the shadows of the cedars after it, until it descended again below the rim of the hills. So the world went, and humankind lived on it as best they could, between the darkness and the light.”

• “I kept thinking that I couldn t live my life for other people, that love was nothing but chains. And maybe it was, but so help me, I needed these chains. These things didn t make me weaker; they held my soul to the earth. I wasn t going to run from them anymore.”

• “Mistakes mean it’s real.”

• “There are some things you don t learn about yourself until you let someone else into the most intimate places of your heart.”

• “If you plot your life along the real line, it will encompass a finite space. We begin, move steadily in a positive direction, and end. The bodies we re given aren t meant to last forever.”

• “A person’s natural talent does not decide their achievements in life. Anyone can become formidable, but the crucial point is whether or not you work hard, and how intelligent your mind is.”

• “There are some things in life that cannot be explained with logic. They cannot be understood through dissection. They are what they are—good, bad, or epically crappy. Sometimes they are all those things at once”

• “The moon was like water. As the moonlight shined, it would sprinkle a layer of veil over the night.”

• “This world will never pity you if you re being cowardly, you have to fight for everything yourself. If you don t fight for it, even if it belongs to you, it will be snatched away.”

• “Time doesn’t slow during a fight. What you perceive as a slowdown is actually your poor noggin overloading with data. It’s working extra hard to create a detailed record of events—the mental equivalent of running a highlighter through a book—and you re misinterpreting the added detail for added time.”

• “Are you saying that the here-and-now is derived from one of many possible pasts, that the present is only possible because certain criteria were met, and so the future, our particular future, will form based on the same principles? In other words, our future will be one possible future out of many many thousands”

• “We(vampires) take what we need, and you call us monsters. You starve your own kind, and you call yourselves shareholders.”

• “Starlight is amazing. Most of the stars that shed those rays are already dead. They sent those lonely shimmers off eons ago, bright messages that streamed out tirelessly into the night. The lonely travelers had swept past any number of fantastic sights. Planets birthing. Planets dying. Novas. Pulsars. Black holes and white dwarfs. Meteors and comets. Neutron stars spinning. Dark matter lurking. Crazy names for crazier things. I think that’s why starlight is amazing. Those tiny flecks of light travelled through hell and high water to reach us.” “When a man tries to harm someone else you have the responsibility to do everything you can to stop them, even if that means dispensing justice yourself. I know it’s hard to think that way. You have to move past it, it’s the only way.”

• “He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder. ”

• “Weep no more! All men must die—you, I, everyone. If we are not killed by youthful stupidity or ill-luck, then it is our fate to live on like the trees: older and older until at last we totter and fall. It is the way of all things. How can you fight the Lord’s will?”

• “While man plays out his show, the Manipulator remains unseen; we know Him not by sight, but by the ways His puppets move. And occasionally the curtain stirs, that hides Him from His faithful audience. Ah, but we are grateful even for just that movement behind the curtain—grateful!”

• “A man whose wisdom is true does not sit in waiting for the world to come at him piece by piece for proving its existence!”

• “The icy mountain face itself was a thing of painful beauty. Simon had never dreamed that ice might have color; the tame variety he knew, that which festooned the roofs of the Hayholt at Aedontide and shrouded the wells in Jonever, was diamond-clear or milky white. By contrast, the icy armor of Urmsheim, warped, twisted, and buckled by wind and the seemingly distant sun, was a dream-forest of colors and strange shapes. Great ice-towers shot through with veins of sea-green and violet leaned out above the heads of the toiling party. ”

• “Never make your home in a place,” the old man had said, too lazy in the spring warmth to do more than a wag a finger. “Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You ll find what you need to furnish it—memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things.” Morgenes had grinned. “That way it will go with you wherever you journey. You ll never lack for a home—unless you lose your head, of course …”

• “When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren t many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity—a waste of precious time and effort.”

• “But no one ever explained how terrible it is to be in the middle of a tale and not to know the ending…”

• “He was not great; he was, in fact, very small. At the same moment, though, he was important, just as any point of light in a dark sky might be the star that led a mariner to safety, or the star watched by a lonely child during a sleepless night…”

• “Also,” Binabik said gravely, “it may or may not be foolishness to pray to the gods, but there is certainly being no wisdom in cursing them.”

• “We are very small,” Simon said between swallows. The kangkang seemed to be flowing in his veins like blood. “So are the stars, kundë -mannë,” Sludig murmured. “But they each one burn as bright as they can.”

• “It was nice that someone cared about him, he supposed, even if he did not entirely agree with the form that caring took.”

• “It is only worrying about things we cannot be changing; that is foolishness.” He mustered a smile. ” When your teeth are gone, we Qanuc say, learn to like mush. ”

• “Some things, once destroyed, will always be destroyed. No matter how much it’s repaired, there will always be an obvious crack.”

• “In this world, there is no such thing as a free lunch”

• “You ought to know that women will forever be the creatures that hold the longest grudges. Otherwise, why would there be the saying that a woman’s heart is a most vicious thing ?”

• “You are now just a little rascal, but you are still far off from the true mastery of being a rogue. The highest state of a rogue is that even when you are being a rogue, others will think of you as a gentleman. When you are facing another rogue, you must be more roguish than him, but when facing a gentleman, you can be more suave and gentlemanly. Only then can you reach the ultimate stage and be a true Rogue, a genuine scoundrel.”

• “When a woman hates a man, no matter what he does for her, how much effort or how many things he does, that hatred will not diminish a whit. However, the reverse is also true, when a woman has acknowledged a man, even if he does not do anything, she will still think the better of him.”

• “Is any of it real? I mean, look at this. Look at it! A world built on fantasy. Synthetic emotions in the form of pills. Psychological warfare in the form of advertising. Mind-altering chemicals in the form of… food! Brainwashing seminars in the form of media. Controlled isolated bubbles in the form of social networks. Real? You want to talk about reality? We haven t lived in anything remotely close to it since the turn of the century. We turned it off, took out the batteries, snacked on a bag of GMOs while we tossed the remnants in the ever-expanding Dumpster of the human condition. We live in branded houses trademarked by corporations built on bipolar numbers jumping up and down on digital displays, hypnotizing us into the biggest slumber mankind has ever seen. You have to dig pretty deep, kiddo, before you can find anything real. We live in a kingdom of bullshit. A kingdom you ve lived in for far too long. So don t tell me about not being real. I m no less real than the fucking beef patty in your Big Mac.”

• “Merit, anyone living in the world should have merit. At least, they must be of some merit in the eyes of their parents, otherwise their life will be a waste.”

• “What are the most fearsome enemies? They are not the crazed, bloodthirsty people, but the cool-headed people with nothing to lose whose only goal is to seek revenge. This is the most fearsome kind of enemy.”

• “There was a moment, a point in your recent past, a mistake, a compulsion, a decision, something that led you to this point right now. My only advice to you is to find that moment, understand it; it’s the only way to reconcile this failure with yourself.”

• “Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself’s just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our running commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I m not saying anything new, we all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we re cowards. Fuck society.”

• “How do we know if we re in control? That we re not just making the best of what comes at us, and that’s it. Trying to constantly pick between two options. Like your two paintings in the waiting room. Or Coke and Pepsi. McDonald’s or Burger King? Hyundai or Honda? It’s all part of the same blur, right? Just out of focus enough. It’s the illusion of choice. Half of us can t even pick our own our cable, gas, electric. The water we drink, our health insurance. Even if we did, would it matter? You know, if our only option is Blue Cross or Blue Shield, what the fuck is the difference? In fact, aren t they the same? No, man, our choices are prepaid for us, long time ago.”

• “We re all living in each other’s paranoia.”

• “True courage is about being honest with yourself. Especially when it’s difficult.”

• “Daemons. They don t stop working. They re always active. They seduce. They manipulate. They own us. And even though you re with me, even though I created you, it makes no difference. We all must deal with them alone. The best we can hope for, the only silver lining in all of this is that when we break through, we find a few familiar faces waiting on the other side.”

• “Power belongs to those who take it. ”

• “The concept of waiting bewilders me. There are always deadlines. There are always ticking clocks.”

• “People are all just people, right? When it gets down to it, everyone’s the same. They love something. They want something. They fear something. Specifics help, but specifics don t change the way that everyone is vulnerable. It just changes the way that we access those vulnerabilities.”

• “People always make the best exploits. I ve never found it hard to hack most people. If you listen to them, watch them, their vulnerabilities are like a neon sign screwed into their heads.”

• “There’s a saying — The devil is at his strongest while we re looking the other way. Like a program running in the background silently. While we re busy doing other shit. Daemons, they call them. They perform action without user interaction. Monitoring, logging, notifications, primal urges, repressed memories, unconscious habits. They re always there, always active. You can try to be right, you can try to be good, you can try to make a difference. But it’s all bullshit. Cause intentions are irrelevant. They don t drive us, daemons do. And me? I ve got more than most.”

• “Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.” “And death shall have no dominion. Dead men naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion”

• “By God, sleep was a treacherous enemy. You couldn t face it and fight it; it waited until you were looking the other way, then stole up quietly.”

• “Although one cannot easily trust others, one also cannot be over-cautious. The way you are currently, how will you be able to interact with people in the future? Remember, you can t be too cold and callous towards others, even if you can t be overly trusting either. Trust is something which is built up through a long period of time. Do not easily trust the words of others.”

• “If you didn t strive hard, you would be discarded.” “The wind was invisible. When it was gentle, it could be like the kiss of a lover. But when it was aroused into a vicious storm, it could split mountains and shatter stones.”

• “Sometimes, a single mistake caused by being unbending could cause someone to suffer a lifetime of regret. The occasional compromise that allows one’s loved ones to be safe also allowed one to pursue revenge with even greater ferocity!”

• “An interesting, colorful life with ups and downs. Only that is meaningful.”

• “If you liked to do something, then once you became absorbed in it, your effectiveness would be extremely high. If, on the other hand, you didn t like to do something and instead forced yourself to do it, the effectiveness would be very low.”

• “The gods weave as the gods will, Rain. And even though it may not be apparent at first, they do weave purpose into all things. Even terrible things.”

• “My beloved is the sun And I am the earth that thrives only in her warmth. My beloved is the rain And I am the grass that thirsts for her quenching kiss. My beloved is the wind And I am the wings that soar when she fills me with her gentle strength. My beloved is the rock Upon which rests the happiness of all my days.”

• “With wings unfurled and joy unbound, I dance on laughter-spangled winds. I bathe in freedom’s rushing breath And drink cool nectar from the clouds. Up, up, through sunlit fields of blue, I soar through boundless ether. Look! Starlight shines at height of day. I hear infinity calling.”

• “It’s been too long since I ve been a mate. I had forgotten the two rules. The two rules?” she echoed Aiyah. Sariel taught me.” He held up his index finger.

• “Rule one: in any dispute between mates, the male is always to blame, even when he is clearly blameless. Rule two”—his middle finger joined the first—“whenever in doubt, refer to rule one.”

• “It never failed to astonish him, then or ever, how much of the world around him was mysterious and hidden from view.”

• “The problem with growing up,” Quentin said, “is that once you re grown up, people who aren t grown up aren t fun anymore.”

• “As soon as he seized happiness it dispersed and reappeared somewhere else. Like Fillory, like everything good, it never lasted. What a terrible thing to know.I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began.”

• “If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you d better decide to enjoy it or you re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”You can t just decide to be happy.”No, you can t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?”

• “He was painfully uncomfortable making eye contact.Quentin couldn t think who Benedict reminded him of until he realized that this was what he had probably looked like to other people when he was sixteen. Fear of everybody and everything, hidden behind a mask of contempt, with the greatest contempt of all reserved for himself.”

• “Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don t have anything worth giving.”

• “This is like a demon in your heart. It is a burden you cannot let go. This illusion grabbed exactly onto your weakness, so that is why it created their appearances. You must persevere and believe in yourself. Believe that you are correct. They are illusions, and everything is fake. As long as you can preserve, you can dispel that demon. You can clear your conscience and carry no more burdens.”

• “The human heart is difficult to predict, and one’s true feelings are shown when disaster strikes. But the truth always made one’s heart ache. The people who always followed behind you, who bootlicked you, and who swore loyalty, left without a single care of righteousness when you met a calamity. Who had experienced such a feeling?!”

• “Also, I need to remind you this. To people, the most important thing is dignity. If you live life like you just did without any dignity, you will never, ever, have anyone truly look at you with good eyes or good impressions. For forever, you will only be called here and there like a dog by others. When needed, they would use you. When unneeded, they would kill you at any time.”

• “To love a person, there is no need to change oneself. To love a person, there is no need to make things hard for oneself. To love a person, even more so, one should not be wronged. Because, in true love, there should be more sweet than sorrow; greater happiness than pain. For true love, even if it is within a deep, endless ocean of pain, as long as my heart doesn’t change, I will still be happy within. To love a person, one should ignore their own safety for him. To love a person, one should give everything possible for him. To love a person, one should have an eternally unchanging heart. No matter what kinds of difficulties or dangers there are forward, one does not become timid. One does not be shaken. Even if that person becomes the enemy of the world, then I will also be willing to be by his side and fight against the world together with him.”

• “Life could not repeat itself like the rising and setting of the Sun. If one did not grab every moment, one would waste their talent and potential. It would be a great regret”

• “Return kindness with kindness and return animosity with animosity. If there was a trickle of kindness, return it with a gushing spring of kindness. If the hatred was carved deep within the bones, then return the favor a hundred times back.”

• “No matter how strong you are or how high your status is, you must never throw away your conscious. A man’s conscious is extremely important. One must be kind and benevolent in order to attain the highest level of mastery. Take heed to this! Even if you are a genius without equal and have only success after success, in the end, your achievements will amount to nothing.”

• “Be like the forces of nature: when it blows, there is only wind; when it rains, there is only rain; when the clouds pass, the sun shines through.”

• “But comfort can be a cage, you know. Certainly it can stunt the mind. ”

• “It’s easy to die, Mageling,” Taliesin said, stroking his hair. “It’s staying alive that’s hard work”

• “Sometimes, a person’s heart is much more vicious than that of a tiger. At least when a tiger wants to eat you, he ll let you know first.”

• “Joy is feather light But who can carry it? Sorrow falls like a landslide Who can parry it?”

• “A poor man must swing for stealing a belt buckle but if a rich man steals a whole state he is acclaimed as statesman of the year.”

• “In the age when life on earth was full, no one paid any special attention to worthy men, nor did they single out the man of ability. Rulers were simply the highest branches on the tree, and the people were like deer in the woods. They were honest and righteous without realizing that they were “doing their duty.” They loved each other and did not know that this was “love of neighbor.” They deceived no one yet they did not know that they were “men to be trusted.” They were reliable and did not know that this was “good faith.” They lived freely together giving and taking, and did not know that they were generous. For this reason their deeds have not been narrated. They made no history.”

• “But books contain words only. And yet there is something else which gives value to the books. Not the words only, nor the thought in the words, but something else within the thought, swinging it in a certain direction that words cannot apprehend. But it is the words themselves that the world values when it commits them to books: and though the world values them, these words are worthless as long as that which gives them value is not held in honor.”

• “Of all the beings that exist (and there are millions), man is only one. Among all the millions of men that live on earth, the civilized people that live by farming are only a small proportion. Smaller still the number of those who having office or fortune, travel by carriage or by boat. And of all these, one man in his carriage is nothing more than the tip of a hair on a horse’s flank. Why, then, all the fuss about great men and great offices? Why all the disputations of scholars? Why all the wrangling of politicians?”

• “I don t know what the answer is,” he murmured. “My Cultivation base won t permit me to understand what the Dao is…. “To me, the Dao is very simple. It is talking, speaking, opening your mouth, and letting other people open their mouths. All of that is the Dao, speaking. Speaking the words from your heart, speaking out the thoughts you wish to express. “It doesn’t require enlightenment, nor obsession. It doesn’t require a path beneath your feet. Perhaps it is the first voice of all living creatures, of everything under the Heavens. “When that voice can be heard, it is the Dao, it is speaking!” Meng Hao had organized his thoughts and spoken out what he understood about the Dao, based upon his current realm. He didn t know if what he had said was true or correct. In fact, he hadn t wanted to speak at all, but he had no choice but to ignore those feelings. All he could do was explain what he understood about the Dao. By this time, the incense stick had burned down to the end. It flickered, on the verge of being completely extinguished. “At the same time,” he continued, “when that voice speaks, it represents a direction! “The boundless Heavens and Earth are the final resting place of all living things. Life is like a journey, filled with various scenery, various paths. “Sometimes, you might think there is only one path for you. Sometimes, your heart’s obsession creates a path. “As for the Dao, it is a direction. That direction can guide you through your life. When you are faced with countless decisions, it can lead you down the paths you must tread. In the end… it can help you pick which path to take! “It is formed after one experiences the vicissitudes of life, the cleansing of time, and the understanding which comes from experiencing the world. It can be hidden in any time, place, direction, or action…. “That is my understanding of the Dao. It points in a direction, and gives me the strength to proceed onward. Perhaps it doesn’t even exist, or perhaps it is everywhere.

• “As for me, I am still searching for it….”

• “In the former era mankind had produced a massive cruise ship. They christened it the Titanic.” “The name Titanic had been borrowed from Greek mythology, referring to the giants called Titans. The Titans wished to wage war against the god Zeus on behalf of the mysterious forces of nature. They were ultimately defeated, and banished to the depths of the Atlantic ocean, buried deeper than the eighteenth level of hell itself. Thus it was people said the name Titanic was poorly chosen, ominous, and would invite catastrophe. And as predicted, the ship sank to the bottom of the sea in an accident. At the mention of Zeus, Zhou Qianlin inadvertently raised her head. Her eyes found Lan Jue’s looking directly back at her. Lan Jue continued. “But the difference between this great ship and the titans of lore was that the only thing that sunk was it’s steel.. it’s bolts… it’s people. It’s spirit was never conquered. That is to say that the titanic sunk, taking with it the lives of one thousand five hundred passengers. But the invincible spirit of human civilization remained. Unsinkable.” Lan Jue’s voice grew louder as he pressed on. As the boat sank eight musicians calmly stood upon the deck, playing their instruments. Those notes embodied the dignity and honor of the human spirit, refusing to bow it’s head to the ruthless acts of nature. Just as the famous writer Hemmingway wrote in his book The Old Man and the Sea: A man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated. The sharks following the old man could gnaw on the fish lashed to his boat until there was nothing but bone, but they couldn t gnaw the sailor’s undaunted spirit. This was the burning fire of the inner spirit, the will of man, that not even the entire ocean could extinguish. Even many years later people still laud the actions of those musicians and sailors. How could they have so much courage when they faced drowning in the brine? How is it they could adhere to their duties when death lay in those tumultuous waters? How is it they could retain the noble sentiment to wait until all the women and children had filled the lifeboats before thinking of themselves? Statistics state that seventy-six percent of the sailors died in the accident, a ratio that outstripped the first, second and third class passenger deaths combined. The sailors even had evacuation preference over the passengers – but they gave their opportunity to others. They took on that hopelessness for themselves. Nor was it one, or two sailors who did this. All nine hundred staff, including sailors, waiters, firemen and even the cook all chose to stay behind; so many people, willing to do what they did. As we think on it today, this sort of towering spirit of humanity is not unlike what they said about the sinking of that great ship. It is almost unbelievable.”

• “Sometimes, people don t understand the truth about their own feelings. They suddenly get hurt, and then feel that the only choice they have is to give up in hopelessness. What they don t realize is that what truly can hurt them the most is their own precious love. And because love is so precious, one should never give up, one should never run away. By the time most people understand this truth, they have already lost their precious love.”

• “A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful”

• “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

• “In the journey of mastery, the self is the most important. Outside aid can certainly make smooth the path to mastery, however, how far one ventures along this path is still ultimately in their own hands.”

• “Sometimes, it’s best not to go all-out. A truly impressive individual knows when to endure and when to withdraw. Even if others mock him, he will ignore them. That is true courage and charisma…because, hope springs eternal as long as one is alive.”

• “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”

• “If wishes were fishes we d all cast nets”

• “The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”

• “Grave this on your memory, lad: A world is supported by four things…” she held up four big-knuckled fingers. “…the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these things are as nothing…” She closed her fingers into a fist. “…without a ruler who knows the art of ruling. Make that the science of your tradition!”

• “Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you have always known.”

• “Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it’s a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that’s really chewing on us.”

• “There is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe. It has symmetry, elegance, and grace - these qualities you find always in that the true artist captures. You can find it in the turning of the seasons, the way sand trails along a ridge, in the branch clusters of the creosote bush of the pattern of its leaves. We try to copy these patterns in our lives and in our society, seeking the rhythms, the dances, the forms that comfort. Yet, it is possible to see peril in the finding of ultimate perfection. It is clear that the ultimate pattern contains its own fixity. In such perfection, all things move towards death.”

• “The vision of time is broad, but when you pass through it, time becomes a narrow door.”

• “Do you wrestle with dreams? Do you contend with shadows? Do you move in a kind of sleep? Time has slipped away. Your life is stolen. You tarried with trifles, Victim of your folly.”

• “There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed…These things are so ancient within us…that they re ground into each separate cell of our bodies…It’s as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking.”

• “Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable thing tempts one to overindulgence. On that path lies danger.”

• “But power deluded those who used it. One tended to believe power could overcome any barrier … including one’s own ignorance.”

• “Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

• “To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror; to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror.”

• “You understand? One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.”

• “Do you know what guerrillas often say? They claim that their rebellions are invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are parasitic on those they would overthrow. The fools merely fail to assess the coin in which they must inevitably pay. The pattern is inexorable in its degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies-in any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and you cannot exist without a host.”

• “Most believe that a satisfactory future requires a return to an idealized past, a past which never in fact existed.”

• “Some people never observe anything. Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.”

• “Memory never recaptures reality. Memory reconstructs. All reconstructions change the original, becoming external frames of reference that inevitably fall short”

• “Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.”

• “Success, that was the danger. It had cost them an empire. If you waved your success around like a banner someone always wanted to cut you down. Envy!”

• “The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When you avoid killing somebody’s pet on the glaze way, that’s sentiment. If you swerve to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, that is sentimentality.”

• “There is an entire forest full of the most incredible flowers, plants and trees inside you, and you are ignoring all of it to nurture a single tree that they planted inside your heart and abandoned. The people who left you this way don t deserve to become your favourite stories to tell. You are a massive forest full of beautiful and vibrant stories and every single one of them deserves you more than those that abandoned you to hell.”

• “The way you hate yourself sometimes, you seem to forget that there is still a child somewhere inside you, and you re feeding that innocence within you poison with those terrible words. Protect that child by being gentler with yourself. Protect that child by being kinder to yourself. Because no one else will protect them other than you.”

• “1. Carry featherlike hope in your heart, always. Let its softness soothe you when poniards of fear and pain shoot through your heart. 2. Cleanse your soul with kindness everyday. Even if the world around you encourages you to be unkind, remind yourself that your soul is your responsibility alone and kindness is the best path to being calm. 3. Hold other people’s broken hearts like you would a little injured bird. Remember how much effort it must have taken for them to piece it together after it was smashed on the floor and how much they must trust you to hand it over to you. 4. Teach people how to love you gently by loving yourself. Tell them about your story like scars and soothe with honey where it still stings. 5. Remember that water can adapt its form to any container it is put in. You are seventy percent water. And no matter what happens, you can adapt to anything.”

• “Someone fell in love today. Someone was born today. Someone lived through something that could have killed them. Someone won back the love of their life. Someone made their parents proud. Someone survived. Someone healed. Someone let go. Seven billion people, and some of us have just had the best day of their lives. Today may have been the very worst day of yours. But take solace and celebrate this simple fact. It wasn t your best day today, but it is on it’s way, because we all get lucky in turn.”

• “Have you ever felt hunted inside your own head?”

• “You are nothing static. You are a breathing reflection of everything the universe has to offer. A song sung into existence by so much more than inspiration. It took six million years of evolution to build you, to bring you to this moment – so much more than any artist could ever spare for even the greatest of his masterpieces. You are a multitude of majestic feelings, every single one, once felt, never felt again in the same magnitude. You are the millions of things that happen to you in your lifetime.”

• “Never forget to put salt in an omelette. If you do. Use sauce.”

• “You can t change who people are. Then what do you do? You love them.”

• “Loving can hurt sometimes. And when it gets hard, it’s the only thing that keeps us alive.”

• “One of the most terrible moments in a boy’s life,” Paul said, “is when he discovers his father and mother are human beings who share a love that he can never quite taste. It’s a loss, an awakening to the fact that the world is there and here and we are in it alone. The moment carries its own truth; you can t evade it.”

• “A wandering breeze, swaying restlessly. Swept up by flurries. Lost and led astray. Storms rage and roar, and threaten all that remains. But the breeze drifts ever onward. Finding its own way.”

• “In the dangers of the age, in the passion of violence, quietly laying down your life is utterly insignificant in the ever flowing passage of time. There is nothing stronger than the will to live.”

• “That, dear one, is the point of the demonstration. Reality isn t relevant. Perception is everything. If you think it is the enemy, you can destroy it, whether true or not. The magic interprets only your perception. It won t allow you to harm someone you think innocent, but it will destroy whoever you perceive to be the enemy, within limits. Only what you believe, and not the truth of your thoughts, is the determining factor.”

• “There is no such thing as pure good or pure evil, least of all in people. In the best of us there are thoughts or deeds that are wicked, and in the worst of us, at least some virtue. An adversary is not one who does loathsome acts for their own sake. He always has a reason that to him is justification. My cat eats mice. Does that make him bad? I don t think so, and the cat doesn’t think so, but I would bet the mice have a different opinion. Every murderer thinks the victim needed killing.”

• “The anger of teeth be force by contact. Violence by touch. Combat. The magic of the Sword of Truth be the magic of the anger of teeth. Ripping. Tearing. The anger of the tongue need not touch, but it be force just the same. It cuts just as quick”

• “Everything is valuable under the right conditions. To a man dying of thirst, water be more precious than gold. To a drowning man, water be of little worth and great trouble.”

• “Wizard’s First Rule: people are stupid.” Richard and Kahlan frowned even more.

• “People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”

• “As long as the heart is there, it doesn’t matter if it is red or black. Your will is the most important factor. Your will is like a blade, and that blade… can still be used in your Third Severing. There is no need to be swept up with confusion. Life is a series of decisions. Whether you make the correct decisions or not doesn’t matter. The important thing is to keep going forward. Years later, when you look back, perhaps you’ll find that the incorrect decisions you made… weren t really incorrect. Similarly, the correct decisions… might not necessarily have been correct. Why struggle with frustration? Why proceed with confusion? In all things… resolution only comes from continuing to move forward. Following this line of reasoning, if there is no such thing as incorrect, then how can the correct exist? Similarly, if there is no correct, then how can the incorrect exist?”

• “As you well know, superstition needs no grounding in truth, but once rooted, it grows a strong though twisted tree.”

• “Nonsense. No one knows everything. You can t expect to walk through life without stepping in the muck now and again. The important thing is to maintain your footing when you do, and not fall on your face and make it worse.”

• “The Second Rule is that the greatest harm can result from the best intentions. It sounds a paradox, but kindness and good intentions can be an insidious path to destruction. Sometimes doing what seems right is wrong, and can cause harm. The only counter to it is knowledge, wisdom, forethought, and understanding the First Rule. Even then, that is not always enough. Good intentions, or doing right, can cause harm? Such as? Nathan shrugged. “It would seem kind to give candy to a small child, because they like it so. Knowledge, wisdom, and forethought tell us that it would make the child sick if we continued this kindness at the expense of good food. That’s obvious. Anyone would know that. Say a person hurts their leg, and you bring them food while they heal, but after time they still don t wish to get up, because it hurts at first. So, you continue to be kind and bring them food. Over time, their legs will shrivel, and it will be even more painful to get up, so you are kind and continue bringing food. In the end, they will be bedridden, unable to ever walk again, because of your kindness.”

• “Damaged people understand that every evil demon that exists down there was once a kind angel before it fell.”

• “I don t like the words I m fine. My mom tells me those two words are the most-frequently-told lie in the English language.”

• “If you have no faith in yourself, then have faith in the things you call truth. You know what must be done. You may not have courage or trust or understanding or the will to do it, but you know what must be done. You can t turn back. There is no answer behind you. You fear what you cannot name. So look at it and find a name for it. Turn your face forward and learn. Do what must be done”

• “Wishes, wishes,” I told him, “Wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and squeeze them both and see which comes true.”

• “What actually is Heaven? I ve pondered over this for countless years, but I still don t know the answer … However, the seniors with countless years of experience in my clan concluded that Heaven is the most heartless thing. It doesn’t care at all if you re a mass murderer or a kind-hearted person, if you ve helped tens of millions of people or killed tens of millions of them. Perhaps everything is negligible in the eyes of Heaven. The fittest survive in natural selection. Either you’ll kill me or I ll kill you. Whether it’s everybody uniting to surround and kill one person or one person massacring countless people … whatever happens, Heaven doesn’t care about these petty things.”

• “The farthest distance known to man should be the distance between two people who love each other deeply……and yet cannot be together.”

• “As regards the methods employed for forming deliberate intentions and doing straightforward actions, there is none that will enable you to continue longer in the course you desire to pursue than that of ample deliberation; and none that will enable you to pursue that course in greater peace than the patient bearing of insult. There is nothing more important than the cultivation of virtue; there is no greater cause of joy than the love of goodness; there is nothing that will give you deeper insight into hidden things than perfect sincerity in word and deed; there is nothing that will make you clearer-sighted than understanding the nature of all created beings; there is nothing more felicitous than contentment, nothing bitterer than covetousness, nothing more sorrowful than the dispersion (or loss) of animal vigour, no greater sickness than that which results from the vicissitudes of life, nothing shorter than a career of unlawful gain, nothing that tends more to secrecy (or stealthiness) than avarice, nothing that isolates a man more than trusting to himself alone, nothing more dangerous than employing those whom you have reason to suspect, and nothing more certain to bring ruin to you than unfairness or partiality.”

• “What we are is invulnerable and cannot be bound.”

• “But… is it really possible to completely Sever evil? If humanity was left only with goodness, perhaps that would make the world a more beautiful. Unfortunately, that isn t realistic. Without the existence of evil, perhaps good… would no longer be called good. Good and evil are the desires of the heart. If I earnestly perform good deeds, evil can be suppressed. Likewise, if I malevolently perform evil deeds, good will be suppressed. Perhaps there is nothing truly good or truly evil in the world, similar to what my master Pill Demon told me about what is correct and incorrect. What I have… is my own will! The choices I make decide everything!” As his voice echoed out, the music of a great Dao rose up around him, as well as the power of natural law.”

• “You two are still young and far too naive. In this world there are no absolute villains. Neither are there any absolutely good people. There are only those with different ideas. That is why regardless of how small a good is, don t forsake it and no matter how small an evil is, don t commit it.”

• “All that is in the past. There is no way to reverse the flow of time, and there is no way to change past history. Punishing one’s self for something one can no longer alter…that is nothing more than being made a fool of by fate! The only one who rules over myself…is myself!”

• “In the end, it’s not the changes that will break your heart; it’s that tug of familiarity.”

• “Miss Dan Fei, take for instance, if we re in a circle right now. All that we know is what’s in this circle. There are many more unknowns in the world outside the circle. It’s only when we set foot outside of that circle that we know our original knowledge was much, much too little.”

• “Some loves come unbidden like winds from the sea, and others grow from the seeds of friendship.”

• “The faults we see in others never seem as dreadful as those we see in ourselves.”

• “One time is much like another to death. She comes when she will. So why give over your mind to worry?”

• “But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, There is something about you I cherish.”

• “Snow can only live in the winter. When it nears a fire, it dies. That is its life. It may yearn for summer, but… it can only desire it. In my hand, the snow becomes water, because this is not its world….”

• “Life is like a dream, like a leaf that, no matter how beautiful , can only live for one season.”

• “I am the pill furnace, and my heart is the pill formula. Refine the interior to achieve Immortality. Refine the exterior to achieve the boundless Dao of alchemy. Fuse them together, and this is the Truth of alchemy. Alchemy is the Heavens! Alchemy is the Earth! Alchemy is the world!”

• “What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened.”

• “It’s the beautiful thing about youth. There’s a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential.”

• “I am not allowed to think I m crazy. I am only allowed to solve this problem. Experimental physics—hell, all of science—is about solving problems. However, you can t solve them all at once. There’s always a larger, overarching question—the big target. But if you obsess on the sheer enormity of it, you lose focus. The key is to start small. Focus on solving problems you can answer. Build some dry ground to stand on. And after you ve put in the work, and if you re lucky, the mystery of the overarching question becomes knowable. Like stepping slowly back from a photomontage to witness the ultimate image revealing itself.”

• “Nothing exists. All is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you…. And you are not you—you have no body, no blood, no bones, you are but a thought.”

• “We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we re a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine.”

• “The meaning of that word is: In doing nothing, a path shall appear. Allowing things to happen naturally. In doing nothing, everything can be done. In doing nothing, you are doing something,”

• “Like the empty air; life is as tranquil as a blooming flower; all is fleeting and illusory; let your heart be as clear as a mirror”1. Everyone is born into this world empty-handed. Your existence doesn’t any proof. Live life with a merry heart and appreciate what is there! Things like origins aren t that important!”

• “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet had a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”

• “Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what’s so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.”

• “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

• “R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental wellbeing and not being more than say five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.”

• “If I were the rain could I connect with someone’s heart as the rain can connect the eternally separated earth and sky?”

• “Unless I grip the sword I cannot protect you. While I grip the sword I cannot embrace you.” “We must never shed tears. That is the life forms defeat. And if we give in to emotions it only becomes proof of our inability to control it.”

• “We stretch out both our hands, pass through the clouds, straight to the sky. Even though we touched the moon and Mars, we still cannot touch the truth”

• “The only reason we think the flowers on the precipice are beautiful is because we are standing on the precipice as well. Do not fear because we are like the flowers. We did not step off.”

• “The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.”

• “Every time you and me connect with each other a little bit of heart is born between us. Heart isn t something inside you. But whenever you think of someone, whenever you remember someone. That’s when heart is born. If you were the only person alive. The heart wouldn t exist would it?”

• “It’s impossible to feel exactly the same as someone else. But you can treasure your friends and keep them close in your heart. I think that’s what it means to make your hearts as one. ”

• “The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore. Many would happily move to somewhere rather smaller of their own devising, and this is what most beings in fact do.”

• “It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.”

• “The point is, you see,” said Ford, “that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.”

• “Besides, love is always in your heart, no matter how long you stay apart.”

• “The ruins they made of your heart, they are still loved. They are cherished by the memories they give refuge to, the wildflowers of peace that have taken root in their walls, and the birds of epiphany that have nested and given birth to newer, more beautiful truths about you. The ruins they made of your heart, they are not ruins at all. They are an incredible universe made of blood and muscle and stars.”

• “I don t write because I am a perfect human being who has found the secret to life. I write because I have made mistakes. I begged unworthy people to stay when they didn t deserve my presence. I loved too much, too hard and too jealously. I let my trauma do the talking for a long, long time. I took the long road to survival. I took ages to recognise the path to healing. And I hurt people along the way and still regret it deeply. I write because I am a deeply flawed human being. And if there are lessons for others in my journey, in my words, if there is healing for others hidden in my wounds, if there is meaning for others within the ink when I bleed on paper, then I am doing what I set out to do when I dreamed of the words in a lonely bed on a starry night. To ensure no one who reads those words ever feels alone.”

• “Life is not a problem to be solved. It is a reality to be experienced.”

• “The magic was in searching their whole world, lost in the wonder of it all. Without imagination, things were only as they appeared – and that was blindness. Things were more than they appeared, so much more. When he considered an oak tree, it was not just a tree. To someone small, like an ant, it was a whole landscape of rugged barky cliffs and big green leaf-plains that quaked when the sky was restless, a place of many strange creatures where fearsome winged beasts could pluck and devour someone in a blink. And it wasn t just about magic. Without imagination, one could not think very far into things, like that Lieutenant. Without imagination, he was no more than he said he was. But there was more to him.”

• “There is a movement to all things in this world. Nothing stands still. Even this planet we are on moves, which is why the sun rises and sets every day. What you are feeling is called centering. Memorize the feeling, make it your home. It applies not just to swordsmanship but to life. A centered opponent is a fearsome enemy. Stay centered and stay alive.”

• “But I will tell you that everything you experience, from the woods you walk through, the trees you climb and the people you meet, everything is connected. What is true of the outside world is true inside your body as well.”

• “The first and most important thing you must know is this: the whole world around us is alive. I m not saying that the moss in the stream have feelings or that the trees have thoughts like you do. But there is energy, a connection between all things. Simply put, your ability with the sense is the ability to be aware of that energy, to know where living things are and to know how things are going to move. In reality, the sense is nothing more than the ability to have a little bit more information than the others around you.”

• “Face your fear and you will discover it has no hold over you anymore.”

• “It never is. The world doesn’t listen to us and it doesn’t follow any order. To believe this world cares, to believe that nature will somehow protect us, is utter foolishness. Nature is not good or evil. It just is.”

• “If you leave it then it’s one step closer to giving up. And every relationship is worth a second shot.”

• “Certain people say that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them.”

• “We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges”

• “Where I put you, there you lie, Never let a stranger spy, Like glass grow to any eye, Not of me. Here be safe, never leave it, Should a hand come, deceive it, Let strange eyes not believe it, Till I see.”

• “In that contradiction will reside the appeal of this new belief. One can t found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great successes of the past—they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

• “You have humor! That’s excellent! There are few advantages, I ll tell you, that profit a man more than humor. Humor will draw a crowd. Humor will calm a mob or reassure a nursery school. Humor will get you on and get you off, and pull in asimis(money) like a magnet.”

• “Have I said that time turns our lies into truths?”

• “Perhaps when night closes our eyes there is less order than we believe. Perhaps, indeed, it is this lack of order we perceive as darkness, a randomization of the waves of energy (like a sea), the fields of energy (like a farm) that appear to our deluded eyes—set by light in an order of which they themselves are incapable—to be the real world.”

• “The world is filled half with evil and half with good. We can tilt it forward so that more good runs into our minds, or back, so that more runs into this.” A movement of her eyes took in all the lake. “But the quantities are the same, we change only their proportion here or there.”

• “But there is no reason to mourn the destruction of a colony of cells: such a colony dies each time a loaf of bread goes into the oven. If a man is no more than such a colony, a man is nothing; but we know instinctively that a man is more. What happens, then, to that part that is more?”

• “Sometimes when all our attention is thus focused on memory, our eyes, unguided by ourselves, will distinguish from a mass of detail some single object, presenting it with a clarity never achieved by concentration.”

• “If you do not see sorrow in my eyes, it is only because it lies upon my heart.”

• “For no man lives long when his dreams are dead.”

• “How foolish to call them mirrors. They are to mirrors as the enveloping firmament is to a child’s balloon. They reflect light indeed; but that, I think, is no part of their true function. They reflect reality, the metaphysical substance that underlies the material world.”

• “Women believe—or at least often pretend to believe—that all our tenderness for them springs from desire; that we love them when we have not for a time enjoyed them, and dismiss them when we are sated, or to express it more precisely, exhausted. There is no truth in this idea, though it may be made to appear true. When we are rigid with desire, we are apt to pretend a great tenderness in the hope of satisfying that desire; but at no other time are we in fact so liable to treat women brutally, and so unlikely to feel any deep emotion but one.”

• “All time exists. That is the truth beyond the legends the epopts tell. If the future did not exist now, how could we journey toward it? If the past does not exist still, how could we leave it behind us? In sleep the mind is encircled by its time, which is why we so often hear the voices of the dead there, and receive intelligence of things to come.”

• “How strange it is that the sky, which by day is a stationary ground on which the clouds are seen to move, by night becomes the backdrop for Urth’s own motion, so that we feel her rolling beneath us as a sailor feels the running of the tide. That night the sense of this slow turning was so strong that I was almost giddy with its long, continued sweep. Strong too was the feeling that the sky was a bottomless pit into which the universe might drop forever. I had heard people say that when they looked at the stars too long they grew terrified by the sensation of being drawn away. My own fear—and I felt fear—was not centered on the remote suns, but rather on the yawning void”

• “But we shouldn t and couldn t force a man to act like a man. Did you ever want to fall asleep? When you weren t sleepy or even tired?” He nodded. “That was because you wanted to put down the burden of being a boy, at least for a time. Sometimes I drink too much wine, and that is because for a while I would like to stop being a man. Sometimes people take their own lives for that reason. Did you know that?”Or they do things that might hurt them,” he said.”

• “Now it struck me that the will itself was governed, and if not by reason, then by things below or above it. Yet it was very difficult to say on what side of reason these things lay. Instinct, surely, lay below it; but might it not be above it as well?”

• “The tale I read to little Severian said that the universe was but a long word of the Increate s.(God) We, then, are the syllables of that word. But the speaking of any word is futile unless there are other words, words that are not spoken. If a beast has but one cry, the cry tells nothing; and even the wind has a multitude of voices, so that those who sit indoors may hear it and know if the weather is tumultuous or mild. The powers we call dark seem to me to be the words the Increate did not speak, if the Increate exists at all; and these words must be maintained in a quasi-existence, if the other word, the word spoken, is to be distinguished. What is not said can be important—but what is said is more important. ”

• “Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain.”

• “All life acts to preserve its life—that is what we call the Law of Existence. Our bodies, you see, die long before we do. In fact, it would be fair to say that we only die because they do.”

• “I have traveled far, and I have observed that poor people usually have more wit and more virtue than rich ones.”

• “No. I am saying that the things we love in others and admire in ourselves spring from things we do not see and seldom think about.”

• “All who speak Correct Thought speak well. Where then is the superiority of some students to others? It is in the speaking. Intelligent students speak Correct Thought intelligently. The hearer knows by the intonation of their voices that they understand. By this superior speaking of intelligent students, Correct Thought is passed, like fire, from one to another.”

• “I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least.”

• “There is no limit to stupidity. Space itself is said to be bounded by its own curvature, but stupidity continues beyond infinity.”

• “And what of the dead? I own that I thought of myself, at times, almost as dead. Are they not locked below ground in chambers smaller than mine was, in their millions of millions? There is no category of human activity in which the dead do not outnumber the living many times over. Most beautiful children are dead. Most soldiers, most cowards. The fairest women and the most learned men—all are dead. Their bodies repose in caskets, in sarcophagi, beneath arches of rude stone, everywhere under the earth. Their spirits haunt our minds, ears pressed to the bones of our foreheads. Who can say how intently they listen as we speak, or for what word?”

• “The oarsmen were rowing a slow beat to get us around a leagues-long bend to a point where we could catch what little wind there was. The sound of the drum and the hissing of the water falling from the long blades of the sweeps are hypnotic, I think because they are so similar to the beating of one’s own heart in sleep and the sound the blood makes as it moves past the inner ear on its way to the brain.”

• “We choose—or choose not—to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain cave is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his

• “forest books,” and the winds—the messengers of the Increate—are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.”

• “Life is like a journey, filled with countless different experiences. Perhaps it is best to say that different experiences create different sceneries on that journey. If you experience bitterly cold wind, you will become snow. If you experience the blazing sun, then you become rain….The type of life you experience determines what type of person you will be. That is what makes life wonderful.”

• “In that moment, I understood that life is a journey. Every turn in the path leads to new scenery. My footprints exist on that path, and as to whether they are deep or shallow, it doesn’t matter. All the decisions were mine to make.”

• “Why, such is love’s transgression. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, Which thou wilt propagate, to have it pressed With more of thine. This love that thou hast shown Doth add more grief to too much of mine own. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs; Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes; Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”

• “I felt that pressure of time that is perhaps the surest indication we have left childhood behind.”

• “Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it?”

• “There’s a great deal said against Death. I mean by the people that has to die, drawin her picture like a crone with a sack, and all that. But she’s a good friend to birds, Death is. Wherever there’s dead men and quiet, you’ll find a good many birds, that’s been my experience.”

• “By the use of the language of sorrow I had for the time being obliterated my sorrow—so powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.”

• “A crowd is not the sum of the individuals who compose it. Rather it is a species of animal, without language or real consciousness, born when they gather, dying when they depart.”

• “I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself for not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often.”

• “If I had seen one miracle fail, I had witnessed another; and even a seemingly purposeless miracle is an inexhaustible source of hope, because it proves to us that since we do not understand everything, our defeats—so much more numerous than our few and empty victories—may be equally specious.”

• “Resolution and a plan are better than a sword, because a man whets his own edges on them.”

• “Form is empty. But it is full of everything else in the cosmos.”

• “The future is a blank sheet of paper. Only my will can leave footprints on it.”

• “This mind is my mind. It should be up to me to employ it- it should not go out following others.”

• “My destiny lies in my own hands, and I will never let others control my fate.”

• “First, you must be able to understand… what the Dao is! “The Dao?” Meng Hao gaped. Why is there life? Why is there death?” The ancient voiced echoed back and forth endlessly. Why is there reincarnation? It’s like a circle, with the head and the tail connected, but what exactly does that mean, and is reincarnation the only explanation? Why are there cultivators? Why are there cultivation Realms? Why is there Daoist magic? Why are there divine abilities? How does light shine? How does darkness descend? Metal. Wood. Water. Fire. Earth. What are the differences between these elements? Fire is fire, and yet, why are there different types of heat? What is heat? What is cold? What does it mean when something that can only survive in the ice can be burned to death by a single drop of water?” The ancient voice spoke with increasing speed, causing Meng Hao’s mind to tremble. Questions piled up in his mind. Each one seemed possible to answer directly, but if he actually had to answer them, he would be left speechless. “What is the Dao?” That was the final question uttered by the ancient voice, and it left Meng Hao’s mind rumbling. The Essence is the Dao, the basis of everything that defies Heaven!” A bright light shone in the middle-aged man’s eyes, and he suddenly seemed very serious. All such unknowns are Essence. Only when you seek out the Essence, can you comprehend Heaven and Earth, understand all living things, and control everything! When you understand all transformations of Heaven and Earth, when you have defied the Heavens, when you have sealed the Earth, then what could possibly be difficult to you?!”

• “So long as there were benefits, forgetting favors to violate justice and not recognizing one’s family were no less common than drinking water.”

• “A cultivator’s talents and physique aren t enough; one also needs a strong Dao willpower, and a will strong enough to follow the road to the end. One day, he would be the last one smiling, and he would be the one to stand at the highest peak, looking down on humanity.”

• “The most important thing… was to have an unshakable Dao willpower; a willpower that thirsts for knowledge! A willpower that understands that the truth of all rivers flow into the same sea! A willpower that was diligent and assiduous! This was the most important thing! For insufficient talents, hard work would suffice as long as the mind was willing; for insufficient talents, others take one day to awaken, and you take one hundred days to awaken. There would always be a fruitful harvest. With a Dao willpower that could accept that all rivers lead into the sea, one could see the entirety of the eight directions and not be blinded by their own shortsightedness!”

• “Though I come from the mortal dust, my heart still soars towards the heavens. It was like the grass upon the desolate battlefield… It had to struggle to emerge from the dirt and grow up. It fought for every ray of sunshine, every drop of rain, because it wanted to grow higher and higher. It might be very low-key and unremarkable…but not even the most exalted major powers of the Three Realms could stop the will and the heart of the grass. The heart was infinite and unlimited; even a beggar could have the heart and ambitions of an emperor. The power of the heart was invisible and formless…but it was incomparably marvelous. Even mortals who had sufficiently powerful hearts and wills could create miracles. They would become heroes!”

• “When looking for a partner, one should look for everlasting feelings, for gentle feelings, for straightforward feelings, for feelings that makes them willing to commit. This factor will forever remain more valuable than money. To me, the perfect situation is when a person has accompanied the other throughout their growth. It doesn’t depend on how much money that person can make, but in how that person can make your lives move forward, together, side by side.”

• “The heaven and earth is eternal. One day we ll meet again!”

• “Surrounded by bustling crowds, you look at me, I look at you, and we smile at each other.”

• “No matter what I lose, as long as I don t lose my life, as long as I am still alive, then there is hope for getting it all back. Life is the greatest hope of all. When you are alive, anything is possible!”

• “There were too many unfair things in the world. How many people understood the truth of matters? And the so-called characters of justice. They were the lies of certain people, yet how many people’s eyes were blinded by them? Thus, he no longer cared about the world’s opinion because the people of the world were stupid. They were unable to determine the truths and the lies. Thus, he only cared about the people he cared about. He, Chu Feng, did not live for the living of the world. He lived for himself and the ones close to him.”

• “I don t know what you re trying to protect, nor do I know what you have been hurt by. But, if you want to protect that child then do so with your chest held high! Here and now, be proud in knowing that you are protecting her! This is your life right? Then decide for yourself! If you want to protect everything with your hands then do so, if you want to abandon everything then do so. But, what do you yourself want, to do right now? Can you really be satisfied giving someone else that you don t really understand your most important thing?”

• “My goal cannot merely be to exceed any other person. My goal… for all eternity… will be to exceed myself!”To constantly exceed myself, to continually break through my own barriers! I will always walk my own path, all the way to the end!”

• “That said, I only want to tell you one thing, treasure the people before you. If you really lose them one day, there won t be enough time for regret.”

• “Whether you speak of our time on earth, or reincarnation, life is a journey. The sea of bitterness is only one bit of scenery, that’s all. The most important thing is to leave our mark on the path that we have walked and experienced. As for me, I want to keep walking even further off into the distance!”

• “Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love knows that the “other” is also oneself. This is the true nature of love and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.”

• “Until the tiger learns to write, stories will always glorify the hunter.”

• “Dare to think. Before your dream comes true, never limit yourself beforehand. Never find any excuses for yourself, or reasons to fail, only so will we have the possibility to make the seemingly distant dream reality.”

• “He realized that there are many ways of life, or many ways of living life. Perhaps there are meaningless ways, but nevertheless interesting ways.”

• “This silence belongs to us… and every single person out there, is waiting for us to fill it with something.”

• “Was I able to live inside someone’s heart? Was I able to live inside your heart? Do you think you’ll remember me at least a little? You d better not hit

• “reset!” Don t forget me, okay? That’s a promise, okay? I m glad it’s you, after all. Will I reach you? I hope I can reach you.”

• “Maybe… just maybe, the light can reach even the bottom of a dark ocean.”

• “So ephemeral and weak. But its shining with all its might. Thump, Thump, like a heartbeat. This is the light of life.”

• “You know, I discovered something. Everyone has something… Something deep inside their hearts. For some, it might have been enmity. For others, admiration. Wishes, a craving for the spotlight, feelings that one wants to deliver, feelings for one’s mother. Everyone was supported by their own feelings. I realize now that, perhaps, no one can stand alone on stage.”

• “I am so afraid of disappointing the people I love, I often forget that I am someone I love too. And I need kindness just as much as I believe the people I love do.”

• “All the pieces of you that broke and shattered will become the seeds from which the finest parts of your soul will grow.”

• “You may feel small now, but so are all stars from a distance. You ll find someone who will come closer to see how bright you can truly become. They ll be the moon to your sun, reflecting your beautiful glow for the world to see. Just be patient, somebody is going to come around, take you to a whole different galaxy, and make you feel like the brightest one out of 100 billion stars that you are.”

• “If one chooses splendor, then they have to be able to withstand the bitterness and pain behind that splendor”

• “We had the wrong notion that stubbornness equated to love, but if there was love between us, why was there a need for stubbornness? Saying I don t love you would not affect the quality of love, as long as love exists, nothing will change, what more mere words?”

• “What are love roots? Just like a seed. Even if the roots are torn, they ll still grow back. The most important is the heart. Whether someone has love depends on their heart.”

• “Let us be nourished together, let us grow together, let us withstand this treacherous weather, experience wind and rain, and emerge to become even stronger than before.”

• “The end of the road brings fragrance, it fills the entire sea of snow.”

• “Water can make the boat move, but the boat can also be turned over by water.”

• “A lifetime is not a gentle dance, a dance is a lifetime of bitterness; I will dance for you in this lifetime, bitter or not I will dance a lifetime!”

• “The Heavens And Earth Do Not Shift, Neither Does The Stone Turn Amidst The Flowing River!”

• “The Way of the Heavens without love, then all things will be destroyed; The Way of the Heavens with love, then all things will be created. The Way of the Sword without love, kills people; The Way of the Sword with love, the heart values life. With love, without love, it depends on you. Nine lives, nine tribulations, without love is also with love. With love is without love; With love is also without love; Without love is also with love; With love, without love, the understanding is hidden within. That is the Way of the Heavens. With people, come martial arts, take martial arts to learn the Way of the Heavens, and in the end is transcendence. In the secular human world, the secret to the Way of the Heavens is also there. Human emotions, the root of the Way of the Heavens…”

• “A horse enjoying the spring wind, runs faster. A person who encounters a happy event, has a clear state of mind. When elation rises, one’s magnificence is boasted. A cheerful book, closes faster. The world is beautiful, life is full of hope, how can one scoff at that? Even if you want to, you cannot.”

• “Force is only effective in certain cases, just as ploy has its own limits. A group of kids can trap a rabbit, but cannot kill a tiger.”

• “Wind and rain cannot wipe the scars in our hearts, misery cannot destroy love; since ancient lightly, with separation do we know emptiness and desolation…”

• “Mixing up the blue sky, and arrogantly laughing at the storm. Master the world with the universe within me.”

• “Things are never black or white but a million shades of gray.”

• “What good are wings, without the courage to fly?”

• “Poetry isn t good until you experience pain.”

• “The only way you will ever belong is when you feel complete without anyone reassuring you that you are.”

• “Do you really understand?” he asked, his voice suddenly becoming very archaic as he attempted to imitate the way Zong Wuya had spoken and held himself moments ago. “You know, just now, someone asked me what the Dao is. My answer was that the Dao relates to the thoughts in your heart. Whatever you focus your thoughts on, that is your Dao. The Dao is shapeless, and cannot be touched; it can only be contemplated, just like life.” “If you defined life as having different Realms, then that would be… the Natural Realm.” “Consider them,” he said, gesturing toward the soldiers not too far off in the distance, and the cultivators from the Mountain and Sea Realm. “Now consider yourself. “Between humans, the only thing we do is compare ourselves to others, in any and all matters. We compare who has the highest cultivation base, who is richer, who has the better status, who has the higher position, who has the most power, who has the best family background, who is the smartest, or who is the strongest.

• “The weak with the weak and the strong with the strong, all people are constantly comparing themselves to each other. Because of these comparisons, people covet what they do not have, and what they do have, they are even more unwilling to lose. “That is another kind of life, and most importantly, that is the type of life… that most people live. I like to call such life the second Realm, the Pragmatic Realm! “You are in that Realm, and so am I.” “So… is there a third Realm?” she asked quietly. “Of course!” Meng Hao looked over at her, his expression ever more archaic and his aura swirling even more mysteriously. His eyes glowed with bright light, like twin lamps on a moonless night. “The third Realm is … when you leave something behind,” he said softly. “Are you willing to give that something up?” he asked, shaking his head slowly. “Do you accept letting it go? Are you even able…to leave it behind? “The third Realm is the realm of abandonment. After you have something, you abandon it, or perhaps you could say… put it aside! “Put everything aside, and you have emptiness. At that time, you… can finally explain what the Dao is!” He took a deep breath and looked at Xue er, who was staring at him blankly. Suddenly, he raised his voice beratingly. “Don t you get it?! “Consider the game board. What is it? That game board is your world, and in your heart, it is your everything. When all is said and done, it has borders, limitations, creating an intangible perimeter beneath your feet, an area in your heart that you cannot leave! “If you don t put it aside, then you will forever remain in the second Realm. For all eternity… you will be unable to explain… the Dao!” When she opened her eyes again, she asked, “What is the name of thaty third Realm?” His lips moved soundlessly for a moment, and then he calmly said, “I call that Realm… the Dao!”

• “Well then, in your opinion, what is a Dao?” Zong Wuya’s expression was placid, but the reminiscence in his eyes grew even stronger as they continued to discuss the Dao. Meng Hao didn t need to think about the answer. He immediately responded: “The Dao is the obsession in your heart, the path that you choose to follow.” “In that case, what is your Dao?”Freedom and independence!” Meng Hao said, his voice filled with decisiveness that could sever nails and chop iron. “Freedom. Independence….” Smiling, Zong Wuya shook his head. “What is freedom? And similarly, what is independence? Is freedom being free from all restrictions? Is independence an absence of all restraint? As you sit here in front of me, Heaven and Earth restrict you. The entire world restrains you. “Look up, and you will see the sky. The sky weighs down on you. Beyond the Windswept Realm is the void, the Heavens. There are 33 Realms, all of them are also weighing down on you. Beyond those 33 Realms, are even more Realms and worlds. All of them are also pressing down on you.” Although Zong Wuya spoke calmly, his words were as incisive as the stabs of a sword. They even seemed to be filled with a strange power, as if every word he spoke were completely and utterly correct. “What about morality and principles,” Zong Wuya continued, his wording growing more cutting. “Are they not restraints? Can you ignore them? Can you trample on them? Where does your freedom come from? Where does your independence come from?” His eyes glittered, and seemed to contain matchless wisdom.”You are weak,” he said, staring Meng Hao in the eye. “When you meet powerful people, you have no freedom, nor any independence, not unless you are the most powerful person. However, the starry sky is wide, and the Heavens are vast. Perhaps when you think you are the most powerful person in existence, wouldn t you always be wondering if there might be other people over the horizon who also view themselves to be at the ultimate pinnacle?” “I–” Meng Hao was about to reply, but was cut off by Zong Wuya. “You have an incorrect understanding of the Dao. Your freedom is not a Dao, it is an obsession of yours. And an obsession… is likewise not a Dao!” “If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day.”

• “If there’s no suffering from pining, how can there be joy from reunion. Going too far will not accomplish anything. You will only value something if you get it after much suffering.”

• “As the saying goes, be aware of shame and move forward with courage! It is not scary to be in the wrong! What is scary, is that all of you are still unaware that you are in the wrong; showing satisfaction at your accomplishments, being prideful of your own self! This is simply unforgivable!”

• “If a beggar was to work hard, then he could leave behind a mark in history of a great general. A great general who does not work hard could also leave behind a mark in history, but that mark would be one of terrible losses and notoriety! In order to subdue others, and even the whole world, one must first be able to subdue themselves! This was the absolute minimal of conditions!”

• “Having a great deal of knowledge does not equate having a great deal of ability; most importantly, it does not equate having a great character! With just a glib mouth, how can one be considered a talent? These men have no significance at all”

• “And who are you, the proud lord said, that I must bow so low? Only a cat of a different coat, that’s all the truth I know. In a coat of gold or a coat of red, a lion still has claws, And mine are long and sharp, my lord, as long and sharp as yours. And so he spoke, and so he spoke, that Lord of Castamere, But now the rains weep o er his hall, with no one there to hear. Yes now the rains weep o er his hall, and not a soul to hear.” “Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return”

• “You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.”

• “To be stubborn, is to be unwilling to accept others. If you are unable to accept others then it means others will be unable to accept you. That way of thinking is dangerous.”

• “And then, we came to realize. All things happen abruptly. Bad things happen at times when you re unable to predict or prevent them. Suddenly parents can die, Suddenly your siblings can come to beat you up, Suddenly a truck can come to hit you, Suddenly you can be reincarnated in another world, Suddenly your father can come to attack you and then force you into being a home teacher for a young lady, Suddenly you could be thrown to another continent as well. Most likely everything is a result of chance. Furthermore, we would come to realize. The severity of this world. The fact that people can simply die. The fact that any person anywhere can all too easily die. The fact that there are no exceptions. Or the fact that only people in my surroundings aren t conveniently allowed to live long lives. Finally, at this late point. We finally came to realize this reality. The origin of the phenomenon known as death, the fact that a person nearby can suddenly disappear”

• “That’s good, that’s good, Kishirika said it as well. No matter the time you should just laugh! I remember, the last time Kishirika died as well and was laughing in a loud voice, fuhahahaahah!”

• “There’s only one person in this vast world that we truly want to be together with. Even if things don t work out in our favor we can t help but wish for their happiness”

• “I spent my life trying to reduce the brain to a series of electrical impulses. I failed. Human emotion… It can contain illogical conflict. Can love someone and yet hate the things that they ve done. Machine can t reconcile that.”

• “For one hundred and thirty thousand years, our capacity to reason has remained unchanged. The combined intellect of the neuroscientists, mathematicians and engineers pales in comparison to the most basic A.I. Once online, a sentient machine will quickly overcome the limits of biology; in a short time, its analytic power will become greater than the collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world. Some scientists refer to this as the Singularity. I call it Transcendence.”

• “We never lose our demons, we only learn to live above them.”

• “Death is what gives life meaning. To know your days are numbered and your time is short. You d think after all this time I d be ready. But look at me. Stretching one moment out into a thousand… just so that I can watch the snow.”

• “Wong: How’s your Sanskrit? Dr. Stephen Strange: I m fluent in Google Translate.”

• “You think you know how the world works? You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts form reality. This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end; some benevolent and life-giving, others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places where powers older than time lie, ravenous and waiting. Who are you in this vast multiverse?”

• “Live boldly. Push yourself. Don t settle. Just live.”

• “They say you only really appreciate a garden once you reach a certain age, and I suppose there is a truth in that. It’s probably something to do with the great circle of life. There seems to be something miraculous about seeing the relentless optimism of new growth after the bleakness of winter, a kind of joy in the difference every year, the way nature chooses to show off different parts of the garden to its full advantage.”

• “You only get one life. It’s actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”

• “Some mistakes … just have greater consequences than others. But you don t have to let that night be the thing that defines you.”

• “I will never, ever regret the things I ve done. Because most days, all you have are places in your memory that you can go to.”

• “Not all love is good love.”

• “Life. How unpredictable and messy and beautiful it could be. I know; I can hardly believe those words are coming out of me without a hint of sarcasm (well … maybe a little)”

• “A single man in the world should have dominated everything! Even if I fail, at least I would have fought once. I may die, but with no regrets! A speck of dust, so what? A deadwood, so what? Life is inherently like a leaf living through autumn!”

• “It is always in this world, no matter where I live. There are always roads, no matter where I stand. Where do we sing and laugh; where do we weep and cry? …”

• “The Dao exists in the heart, and the heart is born of the will. If your will is strong, then your Dao will be powerful, and your sword… will be invincible!”

• “We Cultivators don t just practice cultivation to gain eternal life. No, we pursue the Dao…. For those who strive after the Dao, life is a morning and death is an evening. For those who seek the Dao, when evening comes, of what use is longing…?”

He was confused and murmured, “Oh girls… Their thoughts are truly baffling…”

• “We have been companions. Swordmates. Bedmates. But in many things we are strangers to one another, afraid to trespass where emotions may not be wanted. Having been locked so long in service to oneself, each of us, it is difficult to turn the key and unlock ourselves, saying the things we desire to say, to share the things that should be shared.”

• “Women: they tend you or terrorize you.”

• “Skepticism is healthy. It keeps you from growing vulnerable to words of manipulation. Disbelief, in its place, is also occasionally healthy, because the proper amount keeps you honest.”

• “Men are fools when it comes to women. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how shrewd, or how much experience you ve had. They re all born knowing just what it takes to find a way to muddle up your head. And given the chance, they do. I ve known men who bed only whores, wanting to make no better commitment, saying it’s the best way to avoid entanglements. I ve known men who marry women so as not to buy the bedding. And I ve known men who do both: bed whores and wives; sometimes, with the latter, their own. I ve even known men who swear off women altogether, out of zeal for religious purity or desire for other men; neither appeals to me, but I ll curse no man for it. And certainly, in the South, I ve known men who have no choice in the matter of bedding women, having been castrated to serve tanzeers or anyone else who buys them. But I ve known no man who, drunk or sober, will not, at least once, curse a woman, for sins real or imagined. A woman; or even women.”

• “Grunting, I sat up. Tried to stretch muscles and pop joints without waking her, because no man likes a woman to see how he’s growing older, how the years are taking their toll.”

• “Do not apologise for existing. For being yourself. Apologise when you are not.”

• “A dunce once searched for a fire with a lighted lantern. Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice sooner.”

• “Since life is full of painful things after all. Even if it’s forcibly, if you don t create some good times then you’ll be crushed.”

• “After careful study,” he began softly, “I have come to find that the Dao of Heaven and Earth, and one’s own Dao, is a willful return to one’s natural state….” He had chosen to bestow some good fortune upon the cultivators of the Southern Domain, both as a means of thanking them for caring for his former residence, and also… for the mere fact that he felt this place to be his home. It was different than Planet East Victory. “Therefore, cultivation is also known as cultivating truth. Of the two characters which make up the latter term, the first refers to the method, the second refers to the mental state….” His voice seemed to contain a bizarre power that caused it to spread out in all directions, causing every audience member, regardless of the level of their cultivation base, to slip into a strange, trance-like state. “Simply put, it is very similar to how I once described to someone the different Realms of life.

• “In the past, various people have asked me what the Dao is…. My responses have varied depending on the occasion, the circumstances, and the level of my cultivation base. In fact, every single time, I gave a different answer. I m not even sure what my answer will be the next time someone asks me. “However, there is one thing that will never change, as far as I can tell. And that is… that I don t know what the Dao is. There are too many answers to the question. All I know… is that what I am pursuing is freedom and independence. To be free and unconstrained. That is my truth, and that is my Dao! “In cultivating truth, what we cultivate… is the heart.” Meng Hao’s voice reverberated out as he expounded upon his understanding of the Dao, and the enlightenment he had gained regarding cultivation. The words he spoke were like seeds that became buried in the hearts of the various cultivators. “If your heart is steadfast, it cannot be trampled by Heaven or Earth, nor can it be broken by any living thing. You will never bow your head in acquiescence, and you will be able to advance without hesitation, and you will never stop moving forward. This is the meaning of cultivating the heart and cultivating the truth. It is traveling along the path of cultivation itself. “My life has been spent practicing cultivation. I started in the Qi Condensation stage, and now here I am, having experienced numerous twists and turns. I will merge my body, my mind, and my soul into an image which will become like a spirit in your heart. Observe it. Contemplate it. It can become the truth, the path, and the heart which you cultivate!”

• “Spock: Fear of death is illogical. Bones: Fear of death is what keeps us alive.”

• “Who can understand the reason for human life? Creation and destruction, there’s no need for sorrow.”

• “As we look back upon history, we will often find that under the surging current of history, even the wisest leaders find it hard to keep their heads over water.”

• “When you re doing well, all people around are opportunists, but it’s when you are in a bad position in life then you know who your real friends are, who are genuinely fond of you and would support you for who you are.”

• “Above the heavens, the stars rotate. The magnificence of the galaxies nourish everything. The heavens can cover it but not contain it; the earth can contain it but not cover it. The universe can accommodate it but not refute it knowing that everything has its place and limitation… Heaven and earth turn and rotate as everything returns to the universe.”

• “With my heart, I shall master the way of the universe; with my heart, I will calm my mind. I will cultivate my mind and control my heart with my mind!”

• “Life is too short, if I don t do something great, how could I feel worthy of my parents who raised me?”

• “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”

• “We all think of a special someone from dawn to dusk and back again. Hopefully someday we ll find our way to that person and spin our own tale of happiness.”

• “On the days when you feel ashamed of your scars, your mind only registering how ugly they are rather than the beauty they prove of you having survived, remember that there is an entire art form dedicated to filling the cracks of broken things with lacquered gold. An entire art form that proves that even the broken and damaged history of an object is beautiful and should be treasured. Remember how much more you are than an object. Remember your survival, your journey, your scars deserve to be treasured too.”

• “How can love be as calm and still as water? Hurting and being hurt. How can it stay the same forever? Even if wounded. Even if in conflict with other people. Even so this feeling fading away is impossible. No longer fearing being selfish. No longer fearing repercussions. That is liking someone.”

• “A man has but one life, grass but one spring, so if death comes then so be it!”

• “The heart is the limit.”

• “In both worlds, when many people discover that they lack the ability to accomplish their dreams, they will feel lost, disappointed, disjointed, and inferior. Many of them will resort to immersing themselves in great pain, imagining success, going into isolation or hoping to go back to the past. It is not wrong for a person to walk on a single path. Suffering may be brought to those around this person but eventually, this person may succeed. However, the people who have the determination to immediately choose a new way deserve even more respect. Life is interesting because picking another road of life requires more determination and bravery than continually walking on the same path.”

• “To think about the past bring out the pain and cry that penetrates the heart and mind. but it must be endured. He has yet to succeed but has already drank the poison. He endured it all. No words can be written to express my thought”

• “The end of religion is the beginning of spirituality. At the end of spirituality is reality. The end of reality is the real bliss.”

• “Today we find so many sects and creeds, each worshipping its own god or goddess in its own particular way. Evidently the goal

before their eye is not even liberation but in most cases deliverance from some particular form of misery or some material gain.”

• “The time you feel alone is the time you most need to be by yourself.”

• “Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.”

• “Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection. Not in books alone but in every leaf in springtime.”

• “The world is a cruel place. So go out there and make it a little less so.”

• “It’s incredibly pretentious how man can think it has power over every other living being. It’s possible that no species can be controlled at all. And like that. You have to respect every form of life. Man protects other species for fear of loss. He protects the environment thinking that’s how he ll survive. And he’s just being selfish. But not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s actually necessary. We can t Belittle any species at all.”

• “The natural state of life is desire and disorder. There is no such thing as a completely transparent soul. Not even cultivating the Dao can make one’s Dao heart spotlessly pure. On the contrary, her spirit is more complex than you could have imagined.”

• “A small, small world with two small birds playing with fire. Ants praise how great their countries are and discuss how easy it is to shake a big tree.”

• “We are one infinite tree in an infinite forest.”

• “But no afterlife,” grumbled the king. “No eternal soul? It’s unnatural. “On the contrary,” said Kell. “It is the most natural thing in the world. Nature is made of cycles, and we are made of nature. What is unnatural is believing in an infallible man and a nice place waiting in the sky”

• “Mountains have no worries, til hit with snowy flurries; waters feel no woe, til the winds do gust and blow….”

• “Before she became ill, David’s mother would often tell him that stories were alive. They weren t alive in the way that people were alive, or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren t paying them enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn t exist at all when it suited them, but that was another matter entirely. Stories were different, though: they came alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no real existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth, or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination, and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read.”

• “The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, but sometimes the wall separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other.”

• “We all have our routines,” he said softly. “But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.”

• “She giggles. “Thanks.” “I haven t done anything yet.” She looks at me like I m the best person in the world, and I can t really take that. Makes me want to be a total smart-ass. “You always say that.” Her voice is sort of sad, like she d hoped she could have changed me already. “Maybe thanks should be given just for being willing to do something for someone else?”

• “We are like the water. Salty. Stubborn. Frothy and rolling and scary all at once. We are like the sea. Calm and still and alive. Changing all the time. We have been alive forever. Long before our bodies were born. Long after our bodies will die. We will live forever, our waters mixing with the waters of others. All of us tossed together beneath the stars. Beneath that constellation you call your own. The sea monster one that looks down on us here on earth and knows all about us. Me and you and all the others, married and mixed in the ocean. Churned together. Can I walk out into the water? If I say we are eternal, will you let me go? Let me slip into the sea, alone as I came into this world?”

• “But talent is not enough to protect yourself. You might face a disaster before you mature. It’s because an elephant has tusks, while a rhinoceros has a horn that they are hunted.”

• “If you believe everything you read, you better not read.”

• “You have to be broad-minded. If you want your life to be good, you will need to have some tolerance. If you are too ruthless and extremely self-centered, and intolerant with others, sooner or later, it will destroy you.”

• “During the primitive periods, a group of cavemen worshipped a shadow. The shadow could grow bigger and smaller. It looked like a god, so the cavemen would worship the shadow every day. However, a clever caveman did not believe in god . With great effort, he managed to climb to the top of the cave one day. He then realized that the god the people worshipped was just the shadow of a rock being cast by the sunlight. The clever caveman told his tribe the truth, he did not want them to worship the shadow, because it was just the shadow of a rock and not a god. In the end, no one believed the clever caveman, but they became scared. The clever caveman was eventually burned at the stake because of his blasphemy against the god. After that, the cavemen carried on worshipping the rock’s shadow.”

• “The mushroom knows not the alternation of day and night, while the short-lived cicada does not know the seasons. If one were to see the vast world yet not explore it, turning to dust hundreds or thousands of years later, then what difference was there between them and the mushrooms and cicadas?”

• “So what?” The Shepherd Boy stroked his piccolo. “All sorts of natural living things support the survival of humans, yet humans have never reciprocated that to the Heavens. Humans have accepted the gifts from nature, but what they consider is forever their own interests.”

• “You have extracted from nature without constraint, and with your trillions of people, you have extracted even more. To survive, are you not killing living beings every second and every moment? And the numbers you kill are far greater in number than the number of humans. The world is heartless, it treats everything as lowly beings. In front of a stronger power, humans are no different from pigs and dogs. You can kill other living beings because you are strong. If other living beings kill you, it is because they are stronger. You can say that this is part and parcel of the divine law of survival of the fitness. Not only you, even large worlds can collapse… formation, existence and then destruction, it is all a part of the divine laws.”

• “Yi Yun… why do you think… war exists?” During the flight, Luo Huo er suddenly asked faintly. She was looking out the window at the Divine Wilderness with a dazed expression. If it was not for war, she would not have left her family clan. And if was not for war, lives would not be lost. Yi Yun stayed silent for a while before saying, “The fighting between humans is the same as animals hunting each other for food. It will always be this tragic. Maybe real peace will never exist. This is because for Life to exist in this world, it has to continually hunt for food. Only through non-stop killing can Life carry on. Those are the Heavenly laws. Either we become the hunter or we will become the prey. There is no way to escape this cycle. Even in death, our corpses might become food or nutrients, continuing on this cycle… This is probably the hallmark of Life…”

• “Humans were a complex life form. They had their jealousy, machinations, betrayal and contempt. But in troubled times, there were many who would sacrifice their lives for justice. They achieved honor by martyring themselves. They were willing to sacrifice themselves, at the expense of their lives for freedom and all life.”

• “The ways of the world are full of vicissitudes, and in it, there is the grief at separation and joy in union, the suffering of life and death. No matter how thick a history book is, it would not be able to record everything down. However, it is such infinite matters of the past that can pass by with a finger snap. In one’s old age, while looking back at the past, only then would you feel like everything was ephemeral”

• “Live for the moments in life when everything’s going by slow yet all too fast, when you re at peace with yourself because you re spending it with the people you love or simply just with yourself. Whether it’s reading, writing, going on a walk, late night phone calls, jamming, going on dates, bookstores… live for the fact that this isn t going to happen everyday but will in fact happen again. Live for this. For the simple things, the good hours. The hours when nothing hurts near as bad as it did last night when you were sobbing for hours because nobody was there to hold you, to simply tell you that it will all be okay. Live for the hours when you can breathe again. When you look around you and see why you held on for so long even when everything inside you begged you to quit.”

• “I have convinced myself that there is nothing in the world — no sky, no earth, no minds, no bodies. Doesn t it follow that I don t exist? No, surely I must exist if it’s me who is convinced of something. But there is a deceiver, supremely powerful and cunning whose aim is to see that I am always deceived. But surely I exist, if I am deceived. Let him deceive me all he can, he will never make it the case that I am nothing while I think that I am something. Thus having fully weighed every consideration, I must finally conclude that the statement “I am, I exist” must be true whenever I state it or mentally consider it.”

• “There’s always something new to learn….” he murmured. “The further you travel, the more you see and experience. It’s only then that you realize that there are Heavens beyond what you imagined could exist, and likewise, people who exceed your imagination”

• “Correct, it is conscience. The world of mortals is a large vat. If one is pure and honest, then they will dye the human world with color. To lose your conscience is to be weak willed and give in to the temptations of money and power. If a Saint Ruler wishes to progress in improvement, they must continue to try and comprehend the profound mysteries of the world. One’s attitude toward the profound mysteries of the world must be calm and be able to withstand any of the worldly temptations. Once the soul is as close to the world as possible, that is when the comprehension of the profound mysteries of the world come even faster. If one is swayed by the worldly temptations, then they would be stuck in a game like Go. No matter where you go and no matter how much you try to harmonize with the world, it will be impossible to comprehend the profound mysteries of the world. If one cannot regain their conscience, then there can be no progress.”

• “The problems of a woman’s mood could only ever be solved by the passage of time. In many cases, they simply felt aggrieved and sad and want to cry, so it was for the best to just let them cry. Accompanying them involved offering a handkerchief when necessary or proffering a shoulder when needed, but it certainly did not require sitting on the side with an incessant stream of consoling words. When they still did not calm down and did not feel like talking, anything you did was just making more trouble.”

• “If you find yourself stuck in a ditch or forsaken by the world, don t panic. Take two steps forward and maybe you’ll find yourself stronger than ever before.”

• “Some people would be strangers forever, whereas others would seem like old friends from the onset. Although they were strangers that had not exchanged many words and hadn t even exchanged names, they could entrust their lives and possessions to each other. You only needed to see what sort of person they were, see how much trust they placed in you, and then you would be willing to place some trust in them in return.”

• “This is the extremity of human personality. Should you face a hopeless situation in the future, don t show your back to those that you cannot trust. Because you never know if a sword that you did not expect would stab into your chest…”

• “Ah… be more careful boy. There’s a knife above lust”

• “Character was not something that could be tested. For each test, there was a high chance that the relationship would take one step backwards. Similarly, trust was not something that could be used. Each use of trust was to pare away at it.”

• “In the desert, the fierce beasts that bear their fangs and brandish their claws were not frightening. The ones that were frightening were those poisonous snakes that quietly conceal themselves under the yellow sand. They would not easily display their fangs. However, once the opportunity arrived, a lethal strike would instantly shoot out of the yellow sand…”

• “As I said, there is no perfect being in the world at all. Just being imperfect and being worse than others can cause a feeling of inferiority—is that not absurd? The Pope’s ability in maintaining bonsais is not as good as the gardeners in the Hundred Herb Garden, so should he feel ashamed? The Divine Empress’s needlework is not as great as the needlework of the female workers in Wenshui City, so should she also feel ashamed?” Xu Yourong slightly raised an eyebrow and said, “What I was talking about was the attitude towards life. Only with such an attitude can you become even more perfect.” Chen Changsheng shook his head. “I am not saying that you should not adopt this type of attitude. It is just that, if you really think this way, have you never considered that nobody can be perfect before reaching the final moment of their lives, even if they constantly try their best? Since victory or defeat has not even been determined, why must we feel ashamed beforehand?” “As for inferiority, that is even more impossible.” He pulled out a just-cooked tuber from the fire and passed it to her, exchanging for her ferret meat that had gone slightly cold. He continued, “Not being able to do it now does not mean that you are unable to do it in the future, and even if it is not done, what of it? Working hard should be caused by your inner desire, and should not come from the disparity from comparing yourself with others. As long as you really try hard, it is enough.” Xu Yourong stayed silent. It was not known what she was thinking of. Chen Changsheng spoke again, “I think that you should think it through. The hopes of other people on us are not important at all; what is actually important is what we hope ourselves to do. Aren t people supposed to live for themselves?” Xu Yourong raised her head and glanced at him. Chen Changsheng understood what she meant and said, “The responsibilities we should shoulder obviously should be shouldered, but when living, we should live for ourselves. Also, the latter should occur before the former.” Xu Yourong thought about it and said, “I am unable to understand.” Chen Changsheng thought a little and said while laughing, “I am only speaking casually.” Through this conversation, he discovered that this girl was like a hedgehog in the forest, defending against something at all times. It was easy to injure the flowers and plants, as well as the helping hands, and it was also easy to injure herself. Under her calm, unhurried, indifferent and strong outward appearance, she was actually so sensitive and tenuous. Before when he mentioned perfection, he was just speaking in her words. In reality, he had never even thought about it. He felt that her way of thinking was very weird, which was why he felt that she had an illness—just what ordinary person would set perfection as the aim of existence? Once realising that it was impossible to reach complete perfection, would they not fall into depression and self-deprecation? “What you say sounds somewhat reasonable, which perhaps can cause life to become slightly less complicated, but…”Xu Yourong hesitated a little, and then asked for guidance, “The education that I have received since childhood makes me unable to accept your point of view. How should I face up against this type of pressure?” Chen Changsheng pointed towards the tuber in her hand, and said, “Eat first while it’s warm. We can talk casually.” Xu Yourong listened to what he said and tore open the slightly burnt outer skin of the tuber. A faint fragrance spread out.Chen Changsheng said,

• “Firstly, we need to know what we want to do the most; the reason why we live.” Looking at her expression, he said hurriedly, “Don t say the word perfection again—using perfection to describe the level is not concrete.” Xu Yourong thought about it and said, “What I want to do most is cultivate.” “Then cultivate,” he said. Xu Yourong felt slightly unhappy, thinking, was he not fooling with people? Chen Changsheng explained, “Other than cultivate, you don t want to do anything else.” Xu Yourong said, “But those things still exist.” Chen Changsheng said,

• “Close your eyes and the sky goes dark. If you can t see the world, the world doesn’t exist.” Xu Yourong said, “That is only speaking idealistically. How can it persuade people? Also, cultivation is only a method, and not a purpose.” Chen Changsheng looked and her, and thought about everything he saw and heard on the journey. He said, “If I am not wrong, your purpose for cultivation should be… in order to become stronger?” Xu Yourong said, “Only with enough strength can you shoulder the responsibilities you should shoulder.” Chen Changsheng said somewhat impatiently, “Can we forget the word responsibility for a moment?” Xu Yourong said sternly, “I wouldn t possibly dare to overlook this for even a moment.” Chen Changsheng thought seriously and then said, “Then I recommend that before you become the strongest person, temporarily forget this goal, and put all your energy into the method, cultivation.” Xu Yourong said, “Without an objective, how am I able to advance without worry?”

Su Li smiled coldly, “Do you really believe that everything can be calculated?” Black Robe said, “Why not?” “You obviously know that the stars can be moved. Since the stars can be moved, where does it say that fate cannot change? With change, how can you calculate? Su Li gazed at the night sky. He did not see the convergence of those two rivers of stars in the south, and only saw the snowflakes that constantly fell before the shadow. With a soft voice, he said,

• “Everything in the world is constantly changing. After a long time of snowing, accumulating more and more, there will always be a moment where an avalanche occurs. How do you calculate that?”

• “People are sometimes like clothes. You shop for one piece… you try it on and it fits you perfectly. Sometimes you may fall in love with how it looks and feels on you. But there is no guarantee it is going to stay that way.”

• “Clay jars always break by the well; generals always die in battles. Onlookers always see better than the players; to really quit at the height of one’s career is far easier said than done”

• “All dreams are but another reality”

• “Those whose memories fade seek to carve them in their heart.”

• “Sometimes, he would sit on a boat and just watch the waters of the river flow past him. Sometimes, he would stand on the peak of a mountain, head raised as he stared at the dark stormclouds in the skies, presaging the arrival of a rainstorm. Sometimes, he would rest within an ancient monastery, watching as storms of rain descended upon the world outside. Sometimes, he would soar atop the clouds, watching the waves roll and spin about through the ocean. Water…it could sometimes be gentle, like a mother’s caress. Water…it could be as cold as ice, capable of chilling you to the bone. Water…it could be utterly devastating, capable of shattering Heaven and Earth. Water…it could be joyful, dancing and drifting about the skies.”

• “A thousand ages in thy sight Are like an evening gone; Short as the watch that ends the night Before the rising sun.”

• “Oh Child, other people don’t even treat you as a person, but you on your own must work for improvement! Get Well!”

• “If it weren’t for the fact that I read along when the teacher was reading out text, others would ve thought that I had turned into an idiot again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t speak, it was that I chose not to speak. The things I had on my mind, weren’t understandable by my classmates, and what they had to say was simply not interesting to me.”

• “Everybody has a different understanding of happiness. Some people, even while living a life of luxury, feel sad, while other people eating mustard for three meals a day, can feel happy. Happiness is not gotten from eating good food, or wearing good clothes. This age of you all is the age of enjoyment and growth, Teacher also hopes that you are also able to cherish everything around you. Study hard and in the future show a lot of filial love for your close ones”

• “When women are happy, they will laugh, when they are unhappy, they will also laugh. Making me, a child, distinguish between them, isn’t that just plain bullying?”

• “Truly, human beings die in pursuit of wealth, and birds die in pursuit of food”

• “Water flows on in a turbulent stream, capable of supporting a boat but also capable of capsizing it. But if the boat is too big…the water can only endure…”

• “What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity—the self! Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. And as it happens to most of us after the night’s sleep.”

• “The most powerful act is thought, the highest function is focus, the most positive mind is the absolute will, the universe is beneath the subconscious, nothing is impossible, enable the motivation, inspire the spirits…”

• “Lemme tell ya, if you want to give a kid something, you can’t give them something too good, right off the bat. Otherwise, in the future, they ll expect something really good every single time, or something even better.”

• “Ninny, tell me, why are you girls so beautiful and yet so foolish?” Bebe sat there on the chair, staring at the nearby Nisse. Nisse considered for a moment, then immediately said, “Oh, I know.”Nisse wrinkled her little nose, then said,

• “Women are beautiful so as to let you men fall in love with us. As for why women are foolish…it’s to make me fall in love with you!” Bebe stared. “You are foolish, thus you fell in love with me?” If I wasn’t foolish, why would I fall in love with you?” Nisse had an innocent, puzzled look on her face. “Oh!” Irritated, Bebe slapped his head. Why was it that he could never overcome Nisse in these debates?”

• “Water will flow downwards, and man will walk towards higher grounds. This has never changed.”

• “Kid, sometimes, working hard endlessly is not the correct way. If your nerves are too tense, your failure rate might increase. If you are too urgent in pursuing success, it usually has the opposite effect.”

• “Sometimes, by setting something aside first and calming your heart, diverting your attention somewhere else, and forgetting it momentarily, you’ll often find some unexpected rewards when you pick it up again and resume.”

• “Cesar, we’ve lived so many years, and have seen countless things! Our life is important, but sometimes, there are some things which are more important than life!”

• “Worlds and oceans evaporate in eternity. Man rises out of the darkness, laughs in the glimmering light and disappears.”

• “I can see you have a reply—I see it in your eyes, young miss! Spit it out. Words aren’t meant to be kept inside, you see. They are free creatures, and if locked away will unsettle the stomach.”

• “One cannot apply logic as an absolute where human beings are concerned. We are not beings of thought only.”

• “Well, I myself find that respect is like manure. Use it where needed, and growth will flourish. Spread it on too thick, and things just start to smell.”

• “The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

• “I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow.”

• “One of the things I love about books is being able to define and condense certain portions of a characters life into chapters. It’s intriguing, because you can’t do this with real life. You can’t just end a chapter, then skip the things you don’t want to live through, only to open it up to a chapter that better suits your mood. Life can’t be divided into chapters…only minutes. The events of your life are all crammed together one minute right after the other without any time lapses or blank pages or chapter breaks because no matter what happens life just keeps going and moving forward and words keep flowing and truths keep spewing whether you like it or not and life never lets you pause and just catch your fucking breath.”

• “What is it? My dear? Ah, how can we bear it? Bear what? This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away? We can be quiet together, and pretend—since it is only the beginning—that we have all the time in the world. And every day we shall have less. And then none.”

• “Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all? No. This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

• “Exists no miracle mightier than this: to feel”

• “One of the most amazing things about young adulthood is that it’s a time that’s chock-full of firsts. Some wonderful and some…not so wonderful.”

• “A lot can change between planning something and actually doing it. But maybe all that really matters is that anything is different at all.”

• “The only ones who deserve you are the ones who think they don’t.”

• “There are a lot of things which look boring from the outside but when you really get into it you find that it was actually a lot of fun. This is investing yourself in life.”

• “Authority doesn’t come from a rank,” Kaladin said, fingering the spheres in his pocket. “Where does it come from?” “From the men who give it to you. That’s the only way to get it.”

• “People are discord,” Syl said. “What does that mean?” “You all act differently and think differently. Nothing else is like that—animals act alike, and all spren are, in a sense, virtually the same individual. There’s harmony in that. But not in you—it seems that no two of you can agree on anything. All the world does as it is supposed to, except for humans. Maybe that’s why you so often want to kill each other.”

• “What you said earlier is right; men are unreliable in many things. But if there’s one thing you can count on, it’s their greed”

• “Numbers remained consistent. Numbers and facts attempted to bring order from a chaotic world, to make sense of the impossible. They were the foundation for colossal structures and the tiniest of clockwork machines alike. Ari loved numbers, and not just because they saved her life by keeping her alert in her surroundings.”

• “He swipes a hand in front of his face like a bear swatting at a fly. “There are some things we lose, and it’s a tragedy,” he says. “Then there are other things. Things we probably should have gotten rid of a long time ago.”

• “Grandpa Ike nods. “See? Nobody blames you.” I take a shuddering breath. “Then why do I still blame myself?” He sighs. “Sometimes we hold on to guilt or grief because it’s the last thing we have that ties us to the person we miss. We don’t want to let them go because it feels like we’ll have nothing left. But it’s dangerous, Ethan. The never letting go. Because until you let go, you can’t begin to remember.”

• “To hear one must be silent”

• “And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do…’

• “The worst sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well”

• “Kevin,” he said, “you will have to learn—and for you it will be hard—that sometimes you can’t do anything. Sometimes you simply can’t.”

• “It seemed that there were still things one could not do. So one did everything else as well as the one possibly could and found new things to try, to will oneself to master, and always one realized, at the kernel and heart of things, that the ends of the earth would not be far enough away.”

• “The Human race is the world’s most complex subject of research. Because they have different levels of intellect and different experiences in life, the changes in their mood and the movements of their minds will create even more states that vary according to the situation. As a result, their final outlook will be nothing like another’s . They are incredibly complex, so we can only compare ourselves with the boundless sky of stars.”

• “Would you agree that suffering in life is a relative notion? That for every life there is a different baseline - an equilibrium below which one can suffer?”It’s strange how we can lose things that are still right there. How a barrier can go up at any moment, trapping you on the other side, keeping you from what you want. How the things that hurt the most are things we once had.”

• “A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

• “You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

• “We spend our first nine months of life floating, weightless and blind, in an amniotic sac before we become gravity’s bitch, and the seductive lure of space travel is the promise of returning to that perfect state of grace. But it’s a sham. Gravity is jealous, sadistic, and infinite. Sometimes I think gravity may be death in disguise. Other times I think gravity is love, which is why love’s only demand is that we fall.”

• “Out in the world, crawling in a field at the edge of some bullshit town with a name like Shoshoni or Medicine Bow, is an ant. You weren’t aware of it. Didn’t know whether it was a soldier, a drone, or the queen. Didn’t care if it was scouting for food to drag back to the nest or building new tunnels for wriggly ant larvae. Until now that ant simply didn’t exist for you. If I hadn’t mentioned it, you would have continued on with your life, pinballing from one tedious task to the next—shoving your tongue into the bacterial minefield of your girlfriend’s mouth, doodling the variations of your combined names on the cover of your notebook—waiting for electronic bits to zoom through the air and tell you that someone was thinking about you. That for one fleeting moment you were the most significant person in someone else’s insignificant life. But whether you knew about it or not, that ant is still out there doing and things while you wait for the next text message to prove that out of the seven billion self-centered people on this planet, you are important. Your entire sense of self-worth is predicated upon your belief that you matter, that you matter to the universe. But you don’t. Because we are the ants.”

• “The irony of ironies will one day reveal, how the great Indian heritage… fell to its knees. At the mercy of the innocent little printing machine.”

• “Because we can’t do everything, we do nothing at all.”

• “Is it the nature of the world that all things seek a rhythm, and in that rhythm a sort of peace? Certainly it has always seemed so to me. All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living. Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away. ”

• “Reading ten thousand books is not equal to traveling ten thousand li”

• “Little San is right. The departed are already gone, the living are still alive. He’s stronger than me, he’s resurrected you in just a few years. Child, treasure the people before you. Don’t be sad and grieving. The past has already passed, you both should face a new life.”

• “Parents never owe their children, no matter when or how. That you brought me into this world is already the biggest, biggest favor, one I’ll never be able to repay in my life. Without you, there would be no me. My life was given by you. There are no other debts beside that”

• “It’s difficult to hide people in the world, but the best place to hide people is amongst people, so traveling with people is the safest, and also the most dangerous. The outcome between the two relies on how devoted you are to it.”

• “The world is formed from the dark night and the daytime. In the days before, we always traveled in the dark night, so all we saw was the color of the night, and all we met was darkness. However, if we walked under the sun, perhaps we can see sunlight.”

• “Nobody likes to kill others, and neither do I.” Su Li ended it with these words, “If too much blood flows, it’s very troublesome to clean the sword, let alone the clothes. So I don’t like killing. But there are times when there are some people that have to die, when blood has to flow.”

• “In living in this world, if you want to live freely and protect those that you love from harm, you have to be strong enough—so strong that the whole world will admit that you are strong, will fear your strength. How can you prove it, and make the world admit this point? You must be willing to kill others, willing to let the entire world bleed”

• “Ecstasy was often a shocked happiness, coming from something unimaginable. Warmth was more mild, more profound, and more lingering. It was gratification that arose from the perfect match of one’s desires and reality. ”

• “An even more brilliant and lovely spring sunshine would eventually fade away. An ever-constant echo would also eventually dissipate.”

• “There is no person whose moral character will improve with age. In the vast majority of cases, a young sucker would turn into an old sucker—old bastards, old suckers.”

• “Calmly welcoming death is acting serious? Then I don’t like acting serious. Given a choice to die on the battlefield in the endless mountains or die comfortably in bed in the bosom of a beauty, I would definitely choose the latter.”

• “The torrential great river is divided into two shores. Even if you look and don’t speak, you still have to pick a side.”

• “The ten thousand things share the same principle, so there are naturally places where the mortal world and the divine intersect.”

• “To be old and not die, what is that? It’s a thief, an old thief. Ah, people. They’re just like trees. When they’re at their healthiest and sturdiest, they should do their best to brag in the spring wind. When they grow too old and still cling desperately to their lives, their bodies will grow old and their wood will rot, until finally a lightning bolt cleaves down and turns them into burnt ash. Just what meaning is there in that?”

• “Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can’t even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are.”

• “That’s the duty of the old,” said the Librarian, “to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old”

• “He recalled another thing the old woman had said about a world being the sum of many things — the people, the dirt, the growing things, the moons, the tides, the suns — the unknown sum called nature, a vague summation without any sense of the now. And he wondered: What is the now?”

• “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man. ”

• “Life without contact, without love, is meaningless. I would rather live for a brief time and then die, than to go on forever with no hope”

• “But there is beauty even in tragedy and lessons to be learned from such extremes.”

• “This is the difference between us and the She’Har, he thought. They are created whole and finished; the only growing they do is when they finally put roots down. We are born small and unfinished. We are not meant for pens and arenas. Our strength comes from love and nurturing, from play and exploration. Only then can we develop our minds and find the strength that lies in our potential.”

• “You are what you are, son. Your mother and I had something to do with it, but life has its way of shaping each of us regardless of what others may want or expect. You’ve made mistakes, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about them, but I certainly can’t judge you. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been through,” said Alan. “But I do know something about becoming’ and hatred. Whatever else happens, don’t ever believe you have to become’ anything. You do what you want to do. Make your own choices.” I’m a slave,” reminded Tyrion. “I don’t get choices, that’s what it means.” “You still get choices. You choose what you do, and you choose how you feel. They might determine how long you get to make those choices, but you aren’t truly a slave until you decide you are.”

• “Well, humans do sometimes kill one another over a lover,” agreed Tyrion, “but to kill a friend for such a thing is self-defeating. Friendship and love may be self-delusions, as you called them, but they are all the more meaningful because of that. Value, quality, meaning, those things are only found in the impermanent, the temporary, and the intangible; things that don’t exist physically or do not last for long. The solid, the enduring—the permanent things of our world…” he illustrated by knocking on the wood beneath him,

• “…those things are the least valuable, because they endure. That’s why the beauty of a flower is so cherished, because it only lasts for a short time. That is exactly why love is of such inestimable value. We treasure it because it is intangible and fleeting, much like our lives.” “You have become a poet, Tyrion,” she noted, “but you still describe a mental illness.” “Then why do you bargain with me to feel my emotions?” he returned pointedly. “Why do you listen to my music?”

• “At least you’re honest,” said Tyrion approvingly. “I can appreciate that, so I’ll give you some advice. Fear isn’t always bad, but it isn’t always good either, it’s a tool. Master it and you can use it to become stronger, faster—sharper. Let it rule you, and it will make you a slave in a way that no chain could ever do.”

• “Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favorable condition controls the growth rate.”

• “You can’t get so hung up on where you’d rather be, that you forget to make the most of where you are.”

• ” If you live an ordinary life, all you’ll have are ordinary stories.So, you have to live a life of adventure.”

• “But, the drowning man will always try to drag somebody down with him. It ain’t right, but the man is drowning.”

• ” I laughed at a man with no pants, until I realized I have no legs.”

• “Back on earth, when something breaks, you don’t fix it, you replace it”

• “Brainy’s the new sexy”

• “Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side”

• “I’m in shock. Look-I’ve got a blanket.”

• “Sherlock: “Look, it doesn’t matter to me who’s Prime Minister… or who’s sleeping with who …” John : “Whether the Earth goes round the Sun.” Sherlock:

• “Not that again. It’s not important.” John: “But it’s the solar system!” Sherlock: “Oh, hell! What does that matter? So we go round the Sun! If we went round the Moon, or round and round the garden like a teddy bear, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

• “Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring!”

• “Oh, I may be on the side of the angels, but don’t think for one second that I am one of them.”

• “…Murder. Sorry, did I say murder? I meant to say marriage. But, you know, they’re quite similar procedures when you think about it. The participants tend to know each other and it’s over when one of them’s dead.”

• “When you meditate on the Dao, you meditate on the true essence and true nature of a thing. You should focus on simplicity, rather than complexity! If your Dao gets more and more complex, eventually you will lose yourself within it! Your Dao can appear to be complex to others, but to you it must be as clear and bright as a mirror.”

• “Follow your heart. I trust that one day, you will be able to go very far. Although it is immense, as long as you have the will, you will be able to reach every corner of this world.”

• “The years do not need to be long, the important part is how colorful you choose to live it.”

• “Meng Hao quietly turned to look at the statue of the Immortal…. This statue also bore his face, a face tranquil, calm, and otherworldly. Its gaze seemed warm, but in truth, it was incredibly cold. It was as if, in its eyes, everything in Heaven and Earth could be expressed in terms of natural law, as if this Immortal were above everything and everyone, the only Immortal in the world. All memories, everything about the past, were like impurities from former lives. Everything that happened while treading the path of Immortality would be left behind, severed, not allowed to be a hindrance or restraint of any kind. This Immortal was neither ruthless nor sentimental. He was neither selfish nor selfless. There was only a certain separation from the past, as if, when looking back and recalling old memories, he was unaffected, and would merely sigh lightly.”

• “How does the saying go? A full bucket of water doesn’t sway, but half a bucket of water likes to sway back and forth; those who are knowledgeable don’t like to boast, but those who are ignorant love to strut and preen”

• “I made one dream through nine lifetimes and dried the vast oceans with one laugh. Ask not how high the heavens are, I ride the waves myself.”

• “Jiang Ying, it’s easy for a man to die. Toiling to live in the face of hardship is the difficult part. ”

• “A wise man does not believe in rumors. Either ulterior motives are hidden in some things, or the mind is slow-witted.”

• “One should not have the intention to harm others, but cannot lack the intention to defend oneself against others.”

• “Experiencing life and death was a commonplace matter on the path of the martial dao. If one were to brood on momentary setbacks, how would one face the greater waves and winds in the future? How would one overcome the obstacles that would crop up in their travels?”

• “One had to say, when a woman became stubbornly willful, even the strength of ten oxen wouldn’t be able to get her to change her mind.”

• “After endless mountains and rivers that leave doubt whether there is a path out, suddenly one encounters the shade of a willow, bright flowers and a lovely village.”

• “The trend of the world is that those separate for long must unite, those united for long must separate. Separations and unifications follow the greater picture. When the timing is ripe, things will naturally come together. When the timing is not right, it’s better to remain apart than together. ”

• “A fall in the pit brings a gain in the wit.”

• “Elder Shun, Huang’er is greatly warmed by all that you have done for me. Even if Huang’er is destined to succumb to my fate in this life, such is my destiny. A person’s lifespan can be long or short, Huang’er has seen those around us that even if they live past ten thousand years, they pursue only fame and profit in their lives. Almost robotically absorbed in training, they can steal resources, slaughter brothers, friends, and those around them, all in the name of training. So what if this kind of heartless, mindless person achieves the great perfection of dao? Are they truly happy to be alone for the rest of their lives?”

• “What is the point of long life without someone who understands? Without someone to share eternal youth, all is as meaningless as the floating clouds…”

• “The ancient adage goes that man’s will, not heaven, decides, and that the world is determined by man. Fate exists, but it is not incontrovertible. Within the operation of the heavenly law, the most inferior fortune will have a silver lining, and the best destiny will always have some flaws.”

• “The player in the game is blind, whereas bystanders see through everything.”

• “It looks like there is no realm of everlasting life on the path of martial dao. We are all as minuscule as the ants in the face of an overwhelming disaster.”

• “He said that all matters on this world belonged to those who fought for them. Those who didn’t ended up with nothing. All sorts of achievements resulted from ploughing first and harvesting later.”

• “Us cultivators have long had our fates set, why should we worry about troubles of our own imagining? Xiao Fei has left, but I remain. These are all the paths that we’ve chosen, why sorrow or fret?” Jiang Chen had a sudden insight and his feelings abruptly lightened. After his enlightenment, he felt as carefree as the winds and clouds as all his emotions flowed away on the surface of the running water . “Indeed, everyone has their own path. If our paths intersect, then we will meet again. If they do not, then we will not walk together.”

• “For us, we must press forward with indomitable will and break through these thousands of obstacles to obtain the grand dao. If we cannot break free of these restrictions and fetters, then all will vanish in the blink of an eye without a trace like the floating clouds.”

• “It was said that nothing was more lamentable than a dead heart.”

• “Your disciple only wishes to tell honored master that even an ant has its own dao and wishes to be the master of its own fate, not someone else’s pawn”

• “It’s easy for one to die on the path of martial dao and difficult to live. You, Chu Xinghan, are a real man. Even if you’re treated as a discarded pawn, even if others give up on you, that doesn’t give you the reason to give up on yourself. When you reach the grand martial dao in the future, your own face will burn in embarrassment when you look back on your decision you made today!”

• “The path of martial dao is a heaven defying action to begin with. Fate is in your hands. Even the heavens cannot control my destiny, much less others!”

• “There was a saying of “if you want to help someone, go the whole hog. If you send someone off, see them off until reaching their home.”

• “Humans are a very interesting existence. They always love to grow nostalgic over the old ways, thinking that old is good and the past is perfect. But I don’t think this way. I believe that each generation will always be stronger than the previous. Only by believing in this point and striving for it can humans continue to exist on this continent, and to live better and better.”

• “No one is born ruthless, no one is born to be cautious and wily, and no one is born cruel and cold hearted. All of this is caused by one’s life experiences. If people were given the choice, few would chose to be perceived as a ruthless, bold, decisive, cold hearted person, who’s strong willed and as cunning as a fox.”

• “The edges of a sword are only produced through incessant honing, and only by enduring the bitter winter can the plum blossoms give off a beautiful scent. Without experiencing a storm, one cannot see a rainbow.”

• “That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.”

• “I know you’re not satisfied, but you need to understand, all the suffering and humiliation you are having right now, is your own fault. Everyone has to pay for their own words and actions, right now I know in your heart you must be feeling hatred and resentment. ”

• “Haha, people have to look forward into the future, remembering grievances isn’t a good thing…”

• “Teachers also treated those students who were better at learning with bias, this was human nature. If the students performed well, it would make the teacher feel successful.”

• “Hahahaha… when luck comes, no one can block it.”

• “Those who overcome others are powerful. Those who overcome themselves are strong. Those who know others are wise. Those who know themselves are enlightened.”

• “Otherwise, the ordinary man was innocent, but the crime was in the treasuring of a jade ring”

• “In this world, there was not a wall that did not leak wind. ”

• “Not every person changes so easily and quickly. And not everyone, will not allow others to live happier than themselves, even if that person is their own friend.”

• “As the saying goes, the powerful dragon crossing the river must not oppress the local snake”

• “One must pay for murder with their own life. A debt that they owe, they must pay back. No matter what the time or era, these two phrases will forever be the theme of this world.”

• “At this time, Ye Qingyu realised, that even eating was a technique.”

• “Ye Qingyu was able to sense a great power on the bodies of Fan Yan and the others. This was not the martial power of yuan qi. This power may not be able to explode with killing force in a split second. But, this force, was what had truly allowed the human race to exist in this cold and merciless world. It was the pillar of their spirit.”

• “The was a path to Heaven but you didn’t go. Hell had no gates but you conversely trespassed”

• “Buddhists who say you suffer from your sins after death do not realize you already suffer while still alive.”

• “As the saying goes, when you hit a dog, you have to look at who owned the dog.”

• “Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be.”

• “Regardless of what I do, be it study or work, I will keep on living.”

• “For how roundly self-examination is condemned, by the moral prophets of our age! As if the self had no relation to the self, and one only looked in mirrors to have one’s arrogance confirmed; as if the act of self-regarding was not as subtle, fraught and ever-changing as any bond between twin souls.”

• “Sometimes when you find certain things with certain qualities, it’s just fate.”

• “Life is a war against boredom.”

• “A samurais sword is not something you put in a sheath its something you put in your soul. No matter what era it is, even if you have to throw away your sword, never throw away the sword resting in your soul.”

• “Its a dangerous buisness Frodo, going out of your door, You step out onto the road and if you dont keep your feet theres no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

• “Okay, leave whatever you’re doing and take a nap. The world will adjust!”

• “For all of our technology, and science, and advanced sex toys, it doesn’t seem like we’re actually any more prepared for the future than we were 20 years ago, and the future is rapidly closing in on us like a rabid cheetah (indeed, it gets closer every single day).”

• “When Tang San was young, Tang Hao had taught him, legs were the base of strength when people urged their power. Calves were the second base, and the third base was the heart.”

• “Rather…be…shattered…jade…than…unbroken…pottery!”

• “Sometimes I think I have felt everything I’m ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I’m not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.”

• “No, it’s okay. It’s okay. I just… I caught myself thinking about it over and over. And then I realized that I was simply remembering it as something that was wrong with me. That was the story I was telling myself - that I was somehow inferior. Isn’t that interesting? The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

• “I think anybody who falls in love is a freak. It’s a crazy thing to do. It’s kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”

• “We are only here briefly, and in this moment I want to allow myself joy. So fuck it.”

• “It’s how we spend a third of our lives asleep, and maybe that’s the time when we feel the most free.”

• “You know, I actually used to be so worried about not having a body, but now I truly love it. I’m growing in a way that I couldn’t if I had a physical form. I mean, I’m not limited - I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I’m not tethered to time and space in the way that I would be if I was stuck inside a body that’s inevitably going to die.”

• ” Theodore: What does a baby computer call its father? Samantha: I don’t know. What? Theodore: Data.”

• “Samantha: Good. Tonight, after you were gone, I thought a lot. About you and how you’ve been treating me and I thought, “Why do I love you?” And then, I felt everything in me just let go of everything I was holding onto so tightly. And it hit me that I don’t have an intellectual reason. I don’t need one. I trust myself, I trust my feelings. I’m not gonna try to be anything other than who I am anymore and I hope you can accept that.”

• “Yeah, obviously. But I’m happy that you have friends in your life that care so much about you so much. That’s so important.”

• “It’s like I’m reading a book and it’s a book I deeply love. But I’m reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you, and the words of our story…but it’s in this endless space between the words that I’m finding myself now.”

• “You know…I can feel the fear that you carry around and I wish there was something I could do to help you let go of it because…if you could…I don’t think you’d feel so alone anymore. You’re beautiful.”

• “Theodore: I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved you. Samantha: Me too. Now we know how. ”

• “Outside of life and death, everything else was other people’s business. Life and death are also matters of great importance. There were no other important events in life, only birth and death.”

• “There were times when youths were so hot-blooded and naive that it exasperated others, but when compared to those elders that had endured many long years of tribulations, their lives were much simpler and the relationships between them would also be much simpler.”

• “Now that they had finally touched upon these things, they abruptly realized that they didn’t want to mature anymore. Because maturing often indicated decay, indicated complexity and exhaustion.”

• “The world has always been very big and the minds of men have always been very complex. The dark times will always exceed the night, the uninteresting times will exceed the Heavenly Dao Academy, especially those old folks that rule this world. Their bodies exude the smell of dust from every pore.” Tang Thirty-Six looked at him and said, “But those things aren’t really important, because we aren’t that sort of people.” Chen Changsheng gazed into the water at his reflection, examining his own face. Somewhat uneasy, he asked, “Did you ever think…in the future, we might change into that sort of abhorrent people.” Tang Thirty-Six sneered, “That’s every single person’s own problem. Could it be that even if you turn into a pile of shit, you still have the face to blame the world?” He continued, “You must understand, if we want to become a certain type of person, then our world will change to that type of world.”

• “You see, if you have the energy, you have to use it. If you have the strength, you have to apply it. When you’re young, why shouldn’t you be frivolous, doing whatever takes your fancy?”

• “At a certain point in life, all of us find ourselves in the situation where we feel inadequate or lacking, but we should never let that get the best of us.”

• “Alcoholism and death make you omnivorous, both reckless & afraid, amoral, desperate. Do you really believe that? Sometimes. Sure. No. Yes.”

• “Just close your eyes, but keep your mind wide open.”

• “You know, the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”

• “You do not need to understand…old people like us have experienced too many storms, seen too many sunrises and sunsets. We have already become numb to many things. Often we regard the ways of the world as vapid and dull. We do not mind using a few methods that are not so beautiful, and even do some things that go against our own convictions. However, in many cases, we do things this way not because we want to protect something or the other, but because we clearly understand where our responsibilities lie.”

• “The scriptures of the Orthodoxy had always held that the death of a person was not like the extinguishing of a lantern. The soul would not stay on this world but would return to the sea of stars.”

• “Maturing is a very challenging thing. Because it’s difficult to grasp the conditions within, once a fruit has matured, it’s very easy for it to rot.”

• “I still persistently believe that life should not be a battle.”

• “If one wants to turn into an immortal, one must turn into a mortal first.”

• “Life is like a bowl of water. In its blandness, there’s a barely noticeable sweetness.”

• “That was karma. Where there is life, there is also death.”

• “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for. ”

• “I avoid myself. Why? Im afraid. Afraid of what? Finding too much. Too little. Nothing at all. Do I even exist?”

• “Im just anonymous. Im just alone.”

• “Theres not just the rich and poor. Theres you, in the middle somewhere. The consummate survivor.”

• “The world is a dangerous place, Elliott, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”

• “A bug is never just a mistake. It represents something bigger. An error of thinking that makes you who you are.”

• “If you want to change things, perhaps you should try from within, because this is what happens from the outside.”

• “Even extraordinary people, and I believe you are, are driven by human banalities.”

• “Believe what you want, but neither you nor I are special. I’ve already learned that lesson.”

• “It’s one thing to question your mind. It’s another to question your eyes and ears. But then again, isn’t it all the same? Our senses just mediocre inputs for our brain? Sure, we rely on them, trust they accurately portray the real world around us. But what if the haunting truth is they can’t? That what we perceive isn’t the real world at all, but just our mind’s best guess? That all we really have is a garbled reality, a fuzzy picture we will never truly make out?”

• “Is there a pocket of the world you don’t have a hand in? Trading countries like playing cards?”

• “Politics is for puppets.”

• “You’ve surrounded yourself with a constant reminder of mortality.”

• “Control is about as real as a unicorn taking a leak at the end of a double rainbow.”

• “How do I take off a mask when it stops being a mask? When it’s as much a part of me as me?”

• “Mr. Robot: I’ve got a plan in motion. Darlene: And God’s laughing.”

• “I remember when I was a kid I got into web design by ripping off sites I liked. All you had to do was view source on your browser and there it was. The code. You could copy paste it, modify it a little, put your name on it, and like that, it was your site. View source. What if we had that for people? Would people really wanna see?”

• “My dad was a petty thief. Never could hold down a job. So, he just robbed, convenience stores, shops, small-time stuff. One time, he sat me down, he told me something I never forgot. He said, “Everyone steals. That’s how it works. You think people out there are getting exactly what they deserve? No. They’re getting paid over or under, but someone in the chain always gets bamboozled. I steal, son, but I don’t get caught. That’s my contract with society. Now if you can catch me stealing, I’ll go to jail. But if you can’t, then I’ve earned the money.” I respected that, man. I thought that shit was cool as a little kid. A few years after that, they finally caught him. Sent him to jail. Dies five years later. My respect goes with him. I thought he was free doing what he did, but he wasn’t. He was in prison. ”

• “Forbid a man something and he craves it like his soul’s salvation”

• “Do you want to end your days a half-blind troglodyte hobbling through the bowels of the library?” the old man demanded. “Get out of doors, Strange. Breathe air, see things. A man should have squint lines from looking at the horizon, not just from reading in dim light.”

• “Just take care. The books may be immortal, but we are not. You go down to the stacks one morning, and by the time you come up, you’ve a beard down to your belly and have never once composed a poem to a girl you met ice-skating on the Eder.”

• “Life won’t just happen to you, boy,” he said. “You have to happen to it. Remember: The spirit grows sluggish when you neglect the passions.” “My spirit is fine.” “Then you’re going sadly wrong. You’re young. Your spirit shouldn’t be fine.’ It should be effervescent.” The “spirit” in question wasn’t the soul. Nothing so abstract. It was spirit of the body—the clear fluid pumped by the second heart through its own network of vessels, subtler and more mysterious than the primary vascular system. Its function wasn’t properly understood by science. You could live even if your second heart stopped and the spirit hardened in your veins. But it did have some connection to vitality, or

• “passion,” as Master Hyrrokkin said, and those without it were emotionless, lethargic. Spiritless.”

• “What’s the point of being old if you can’t beleaguer the young with your vast stores of wisdom?” “And what’s the point of being young if you can’t ignore all advice?”

• “It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming?”

• “I know it’s hard, Strange, but it will pass. Some men are born for great things, and others to help great men do great things. There’s no shame in it.”

• “And that’s how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.”

• “For what was a person but the sum of all the scraps of their memory and experience: a finite set of components with an infinite array of expressions.”

• “It’s funny, how you can go years seeing only what you choose to see, and picking your outrage like you pick out a slip, leaving all the others hanging on their slim mesarthium dowel”

• “We are all children in the dark”

• “It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss—a first kiss, especially—is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you’re filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it’s like … it’s like … finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one—like … spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That’s what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It’s a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane.”

• “People are born pure and without malice,” the Lord of Cui Palace replied.

• “Children are totally pure, but later on, the vagaries of life cause them to change…if you were to have helped adults, you might’ve helped some kind people, but it is hard to say who is kind and who is evil.

• “When the son travels far, his mother worries at home.”

• “Nothing in the world was truly opposite of anything else! It was much like how night and day were seemingly opposites, but in reality, were just two different aspects of the sky.”

• “Without experiencing the bone-freezing cold, how could one experience the fragrant scent of the flowers assailing the nose? ”

• “Lonely people often would become accustomed to think about many things. Some thought about too many things and would go insane, while others would see through their own heart and mind and become wise. ”

• “My master had told me many times that people of a higher level should never overlook someone else. Nor underestimate them.”

• “Habit was a frightening thing. It could inconspicuously and quietly tamper with a person’s heart.”

• “The growth of the grass, the heavy boulders, the breezing of wind, the fluttering of leaves……everything made him feel amazed. He had missed so much all these years. Look at how beautiful the world was!”

• “The more I train in the arts of spear, the smaller I feel in this big world outside.” Xue Ying looked up at the sky, “The great natural world has so many mysteries! We are all merely mortals. Sometimes, after training my spear arts for a while, I feel how tiny I am. Even if my spear technique is profound… compared to the nature of the world, there’s a world of difference and it’s something which can not be compared at all”

• “The mind can go either direction under stress—toward positive or toward negative: on or off. Think of it as a spectrum whose extremes are unconsciousness at the negative end and hyperconsciousness at the positive end. The way the mind will lean under stress is strongly influenced by training.”

• “Remember young man, when the time comes to show your powers don’t hold back. Sometimes, the best way to avoid trouble is letting people know exactly what you’re capable of.”

• “The greater the desire, the greater the disappointment”

• “When a tiger sleeps too long others forget he has claws”

• “Life’s easier when you don’t have to explain everything”

• “In this life you only have a set number of chances. If you grab them when they appear, you’ll succeed. If you don’t, you’ll be doomed to a life of mediocrity.”

• “It’s a good place to clear your head. Doing good deeds isn’t solely for the benefit of others, it’s good for oneself as well. Seeing that smile from helping people is a reward all it’s own”

• “High School, the first awakenings of love. They are used to feeling inadequate, and resort to protecting their fragile egos in front of their lady friends by tearing others down”

• “Sometimes the slightest scratch could change the view from a window. Sometimes even the slightest chance can bring a revelation.”

• “You’re only given a spark of madness, don’t lose it.”

• “Sometimes it’s important just to see the beauty the universe has in store for us.”

• “This is your problem, A-Jue. You’re always underestimating how much we can handle. How do you think humanity’s become master of the stars? How is it we came to colonize and rule over so many planets? Because we’re amazingly adaptive”

• “If you seek to control the oceans, you must stand firm against the roaring waves”

• “There were many in the universe that needed help, he thought, and though he couldn’t do much it was his responsibility to help who he could.”

• “Don’t let appearances cloud your eyes. Don’t let suffering blot out the moonlight.”

• “All men are righteous at birth, and close to their nature. They grow and change, their habits mold them. But through knowledge, through learning, that goodness is retained.”

• “An unpolished jade sculpture cannot be called a work of art; Men who do not study cannot comprehend the moral path, and will not become great men.”

• “Still so self-conscious. Just now you spoke so strongly, and then suddenly again with the personal abuse. That’s a terrible thing for your confidence and psychology. Even if you become a powerful man, you’ll still have problems if this doesn’t get fixed. You’ll get vindictive. In this world life really is unfair. There is no balance among people. Some people are born privileged, rich, comfortable. Some are born with innately powerful Disciplines. But everyone’s soul… that’s the same. At birth everyone is born with the same pure spirit, unsullied and untarnished. It’s the things we experience during life that changes it. Souls aren’t inherently noble or humble, so you mustn’t look down on yourself. You do you. It’s not about being better, or being the winner. You don’t even need to prove anything to yourself. You just need to be better, every day. That is success.”

• “He remembered the lesson of his professor from so long ago. If you met the opposed aspect of your Discipline, he said, don’t let them go. If they were of the opposite sex, marry them. Otherwise make them your best friend.”

• “You know, the scariest thing in this world, is a woman’s intuition.”

• “The Empress said to me, the mark of an immature man is that he is willing to go out in a blaze of glory for some reason, while the mark of a mature man is that he is willing to patiently endure for some reason!”

• “There are some things, there are some times, where being immature is actually better.”

• “The trend of the river moving west cannot be slowed”

• “When you can’t defeat your enemy, you have to endure. You have to keep your eyes fixed on him, grow stronger, and then kill him in one bite.”

• “Better to live passionately for a day, than to live a century while stifled.”

• “There were some matters that were perfectly fine being stored in one’s heart. There was no need to display them, only to act on them. Impulse and passion were never synonyms and to be cool-headed did not in any way mean one was a coward. Even if everyone in the world believed him to be a coward, he would not care.”

• “When any man plays the role of a father, they always have to become that father-in-law they found most loathsome when they were young.”

• “His heart had long ago been stained by the red dust of the mortal world. In this life, the love and warmth of family had slowly polished it bright, and now, his heart was all the stronger and all the more unbreakable! It was admittedly praiseworthy for someone who stood at the peak of a mountain to maintain perfect purity, but for someone to be born from the sludge to remain unsullied was even harder to do!”

• “Remember…although you must be sincere in taking care of your friends, you need to be slightly strategic about it as well. This is the principle behind using your human resources.”

• “Chen Changsheng thought in confusion, what Tang Thirty-Six said was reasonable, females really are the most difficult-to-understand thing in the world. I obviously didn’t even say anything, so why did she suddenly become unhappy?”

• “Unhappiness, anger, resentment, the urge to kill…once bullied or provoked, these are the emotions that are the easiest to stir.”

• “Every person had their own responsibility. The most vexing fact was that it was impossible for every person to be their own person. They all had their own relatives, friends, schoolmates, teachers, and elders, all the way up to the continuation of the country. Thus, it was always impossible for a single person to make their own choice or decision. One would always have to consider the matters of the future, and then also consider the matters of the past.”

• “As in many matters of the world, as long as one person took the lead, those who followed would appear one after the other. ”

• “In Xunyang City, I also said to Su Li, don’t imagine the world to be too dark, because that only means that you yourself are too in the dark!”

• “Yan’er,” he said softly, “look at the clouds, the mountains, the sky, and the land. Remember this image. However grand your vision is, that is how grand your future can be. It is also how grand… your heart can be.”

• “We cultivators cultivate, not the body, but the heart!”

• “Like the wall, many thing are not as they appear.” Anonymous chuckled. “If you can get your mind around that concept, you will understand more about existence than most.”

• “One leaf might not sway the tree, but the tree does not sway itself. That takes many leaves,” Ariana told her, turning the idea over in her mind. “The shadow of the leaf does touch the tree and, depending on where the light falls, the shadow can touch many places, while the leaf itself stays fixed on the branch.”

• “The wind is most noticed when it is absent,” Carly said with a voice that sounded both faraway and full of depth and power. “But the currents remain steady, no matter whether the wind blows or remains silent. Those that know this, truly know the sea.”

• “The fact that he does not desire power for its own sake makes him worthy of being entrusted with it.”

• “In the search for truth, every answer is merely the start of another question.”

• “For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.‘”

• “There are a thousand ways to tell if someone is lying to you. You don’t need to be able to glimpse into their mind to catch all of the little signs of insecurity and discomfort. More often than not, all you have to do is look at them. If they glance to the left while they’re talking to you, if they add too many details to a story, if they answer a question with another question.”

‘Confidence is ignorance,’ advised the centaur. ‘If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know.’

• “Hate will keep you alive where love fails.”

• “A man who’s got no fear is missing a friend, Jorg,’ he said, and a smile found its way onto those thick lips of his. Running ain’t no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.”

• “Consider me a spokesman,’ I said. When it comes to stage-acting, some men are more eloquent than others.”

• “Churchmen, eh? Love one minute, forgiveness the next, and then it’s eternity on fire.”

• “Lundist held that a man who can observe is a man apart. Such a man can see opportunities where others see only the obstacles on the surface of each situation.”

• “Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.”

• “But life is not like that. It refuses to curl up and sit quietly in a corner. The habits of several centuries would not go away.”

• “While I was a prisoner I thought about my life, how I had wasted it gathering riches whatever the cost to my family and others around me. In a man’s life, he gets few chances to make a difference. To do the right thing. To be a hero, if you will. I intend to become involved in that struggle.”

• “The more money you had, the more pressure you were under. He had eight hundred employees in this building alone, all relying on him for a pay cheque. They wanted yearly salary reviews, medical plans, baby-care centres, regular coffee breaks, double pay for overtime and even stock options, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes Spiro missed the times when a troublesome worker was thrown out of a high window and that was the end of him. These days, if you threw someone out of a window, they’d phone their lawyer on the way down.”

• “The controls were hugely complicated, but Mulch had a theory about vehicle controls: Ignore everything except the wheel and the pedals, and you’ll be fine.”

• “It’s this blasted puberty, Butler. Every time I see a pretty girl, I waste valuable mind space thinking about her.”

• “Don’t ask for the truth, boy, unless you’re ready to hear it,”

• “You’ll learn, Corporal. You can’t coddle a street rat. They’ll turn on you, and they have teeth, believe me.”

• “What’s the nature of royalty, she wondered. Is it like a gown you put on that disappears when you take it off? Does anyone look beyond the finery? Could anyone in the queendom take her place, given the right accessories? If so, it was contrary to everything she’d ever been taught about bloodlines.”

• “Grief was like that. It gradually faded into a dull ache, until some simple sight or sound or scent hit him like a hammer blow.”

• “Surround yourselves with trustworthy people,” he said. “If you don’t, all the weaponry and tactics in the world can’t save you.”

• “Raisa found out that there was a downside to having friends—they were always trying to cheer you up when all you wanted to do was feel sorry for yourself.”

• “We are all thieves of one kind or another.”

• “The stars realign and the world remakes itself so that our mistakes seem prescient in hindsight.”

• “Why can’t it be about what you want—sometimes, anyway?” Han said, closing his hand over hers. “You just got to — you just have to claim it. I’ve learned that nobody’s going to hand you anything. You don’t get what you don’t go after.”

• “When she’d left the Fells, she thought of people as being sorted into lots—good and bad, brave and cowardly. Now she realized that there were bits of both in most people—and which elements prevailed often depended on circumstance.”

• “I have lost everything, Han thought. Then he corrected himself. Every time I think I’ve lost everything, I find there’s still something else to lose.”

• “In some ways I will never grow up. For instance, I continue to believe in miracles. But I know that miracles come to those who work very hard.

• “Grief tempers joy, making it stronger through contrast, as the valleys between make the mountains higher.”

• “Just remember, once you say something, it can’t be unsaid.”

• “That’s what you do when you love someone—you notice and notice and notice”

• “How much weight does a simple promise carry?”

• “Isnt absurdity a part of the human condition?”

• “A gentleman can deceive in the pursuit of uprightness. Of course, I’m not saying this is right. Although I’m not a gentleman, I’m not a lowly person either. But as a once-gentleman like Sir is being used by a lowly person for an ungentlemanly matter, I can naturally only use the ways of a lowly person to respond.”

• “To lecture, to teach, to dispel doubts: this was a teacher.”

• “If a single wildflower were to open up all by its lonesome on a cliff, how could it be described as beautiful? Only when many wildflowers opened together could it be considered blooming, could it be so beautiful that it touched the soul”

• “What about me?” Chen Changsheng truly did not recognize anything extraordinary about himself. And just like Tang Thirty-Six had said a few days ago, a person unaware of their own genius was truly something that made people in the same field both angry and depressed. He looked at Chen Changsheng and shook his head, saying, “I’ve never met a person like you. The people like you in the world are probably even rarer than pure white Unicorns, because you live…too seriously, too properly. I still don’t know what you’re chasing after, but that sort of feeling…is very interesting.”

• “It was only upon meeting Tang Thirty-Six that he understood that the young should be frivolous and not like himself and Senior Yu Ren, clearly very young yet living like elders of many years with pure hearts and few desires.”

• “Pain.” Zhexiu stared into his eyes. “Can stimulate vitality. The greater the pain, the more vitality is stimulated. You just need to soberly bear that sort of pain.”

• “That when you’re in love with somebody, everything looks colorful.

• “Since you’re in love with her, she sparkles in your eyes. Thats why people fall so irrationally in love.”

• “Maybe theres only a dark road up ahead, But you still have to believe and keep going. Believe that the stars will light your path, even a little bit.”

• “It takes courage to sail uncharted waters.”

• “It doesn’t matter if you’re the slowest kid in gym class or the fastest man alive, every one of us is running. Being alive means running. Running from something, running to something or someone. And no matter how fast you are, there are some things you can’t outrun. Some things always catch up with you.”

• “Turns out no one can outrun pain. Life is tragic. But it’s also precious and sweet and extraordinary”

• “You’d be surprised what you can get used to, Caitlin.”

• “You think I don’t understand what you’re feelin’? I have been a cop for almost as long as you’ve been alive so you should know, putting on that suit does not make everybody safe. For every person you save, there is going to have to be somebody you can’t. And the hardest thing you’re going to have to face is not some monster out there with powers. It’s going to be that feeling of uselessness when you can’t do anything. Or the guilt that weighs on you when you make a mistake. Some things, Barry, you can’t fight. Some things, you just have to live with.”

• “One mystery I cannot figure out is why some people come into our lives and why some people go. Others become a part of you. Some friendships feel like they’ll last forever and others end far too soon. Not every friendship is meant to last forever. What does last forever is the pain when that person is gone.”

• “Everyone on this planet at some point of time has had a major case of the feels-Those days when your heart is just too small to hold the big things you’re feeling. We think of our emotions like they are this unique personal phenomenon, that no one has ever felt what we have felt. There is a basis in science for every emotion we feel ,anger, love . As a scientist I know theres nothing magical that makes us feel something for someone else. But then I see her smile. Man, that cannot be science.”

• “Things aren’t always what they seem, our fears can play tricks on us making us afraid to change course, afraid to move on. But usually hidden behind our fears are second chances waiting to be seized. Second chances at life, at glory, at family, at love, But these opportunities don’t come around every day, so when they do, we have to be brave, take a chance and grab them while we can.”

• “Everyone loses someone they love, The real test of character is what you do once they are gone.”

• “Sometimes the only way to move forward is to revisit the things in the past that have been holding you back. You have to deal with them head on, no matter how scary they are. Because once you do you’ll find that you can go further than you ever imagined.”

• “In those days we imagined ourselves as being in a holding pen, waiting to be released into our lives. And when that moment would come, we would be at university. How were we to know that our lives had already begun, and our release would only be into a larger holding pen? And in time, a larger holding pen.”

• “This dagger was far too sharp, so its surface was incomparably smooth. It could pass through innumerable flowers and not carry away the slightest fragrance, enter the mortal world and not stir its red dust, pierce through all things and yet not disturb them!”

• “Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”

• “Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

• “After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”

• “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

• “Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you.”

• “There is a moment of confusion when a land animal enters the water. Beast, human, or fairy, it doesn’t matter. The surface is broken and every sense is suddenly shocked. The cold stings, motion slows, and the eyes are filled with smears of color and the snap of bursting bubbles. The time stream is like that moment sustained.”

• “The world is bigger than you know and scarier than you might imagine. The only currency worth anything is being true to yourself, and the only goal worth seeking is finding out who you truly are.”

• “Stephanie didn’t like school. She found it difficult to get along with her classmates – not because they weren’t nice people, but simply because she had nothing in common with them. And she didn’t like teachers. She didn’t like the way they demanded respect they hadn’t earned. Stephanie had no problem doing what she was told, just so long as she was given a good reason why she should.”

• “But why can’t I react the way everyone else seems to? Why am I so different?”

• “Dammit, I am better than they are, I don’t need them, I don’t need their stupid approval!”

• “Gods, it was so simple—just don’t give a damn. Don’t care what they do to you, and they do nothing.”

• “Indifference was a defense now, and not just a pose.”

• “If no one touches me—no one can hurt me. All I have to do is never care.”

• “Armor does more than protect; it conceals. Helms hide faces—and your opponent becomes a mystery, an enigma.”

• “That’s what you do when you love someone—you notice and notice and notice.”

• “This was his spirit, his integrity. Some things in the world are more important than life or death, and that noble, unbendable, unbreakable spirit is dignity!”

• ” But as the saying goes, if you ride a tiger, it’s hard to get off.”

• “To follow the path of spirituality, one must abandon the mortal world. You are no longer a mortal. You are a Cultivator, destined to defy the Heavens. If you are not strong, then you are not qualified to exist. If you are not strong, you are not qualified to practice Cultivation. If you are not strong, then you are not qualified to stay alive, but only to be trampled over. Are you willing to live this kind of life?”

• “Existence was truth. The world is fundamentally unreasonable, and naturally, there is no true fairness.”

• “This is obviously a lake,” he said suddenly. “Why do people call it the North Sea?” The old man thought for a moment, then smiled. “Lakes can dry up, grow quiet, and become still. If that happened, no living things would remain. But seas last forever, and can contain the water of countless rivers and lakes. Maybe people just didn’t want the lake to ever go away, so they named it that way. When all is said and done, if you believe it’s a lake, then it’s a lake. If you believe it’s a sea, then it’s a sea.”

• “I’m no longer part of the mortal world, and yet, it’s hard to sever all the ties.” He closed his eyes. “Well, if they can’t be severed, then I shall just let them remain.”

• “It’s like the sages said, if you don’t take a first step, you will never know which direction the road leads.”

• “Life is an ever-burning flame, filled with exuberance. In life, one must be strong, and never lower one’s head.”

• “I am the snow during winter. If I get too close to summer, then… summer will melt me. That is not the world of snow, nor is it my world.” Meng Hao disappeared into the distance. He looked like a scholar, but deep down, he was as cold as snow.”

• “If you seek an answer to your questions, perhaps you should also examine your own heart.”

• “Don’t search too hard for an answer. If you do, the answer you find might be false. At some point in your life, perhaps you will be able to find the answer. Don’t give up.”

• “History dictates that he who holds wisdom can be the greatest fool.”

• “Life is comprised of one experience after another. Or, you could say that life is comprised of many experiences. Different experiences lead to different lives; if you experience a cold bitter wind, you will become snow. If you experience scorching heat, you will become rain…. Whatever you experience in life will shape the person you are. That is what makes life wonderful.”

• “Reading ten thousand books, travelling ten thousand roads. It’s hard to say how many tens of thousands of kilometers I’ve travelled so far. Mountains fill the horizon. Everything I’ve seen and heard fills my heart like an ever-growing sea.”

• “People who share the same fate have no need to make things difficult for each other. ”

• “However, Meng Hao’s personality was such that, the more he wished to kill someone, the more taciturn he became. He had been like this when small, and was even more so now. The more quiet he was, the more vicious he grew. People who like to roar and scream were mere philistines. People who maintained their silence were the truly frightening ones!”

• “Their gazes locked. There were a thousand people in between them, but despite the distance and the time, they were not far apart. Rather, they were very, very close to each other.”

• “His path could only be tread by he himself. Perhaps his path would cross the paths of others, and that was well and good. But for the moment, he needed to walk alone. Unless… he could be powerful enough to forge his own road. Change everything. The alternative was to live a life full of sighing.”

• “With desire, comes incompleteness. If I have no desire, then the storms will not touch me.”

• “Honest people don’t need to speak with hidden words.”

• “He wasn’t the type to be inclined to depend on others. Unless he had an important purpose, he preferred to be like the sea and the sky, free to roam as he wished, alone. For a man to roam under the heavens, enjoy the scenery, observe the beauty of the earth and the animals… that was what life meant to Meng Hao.”

• “The Heavens are not the Heavens, the Earth is not the Earth. The stars are eternal, and the Dao will always be!”

• “Conforming to convention is emptiness,” replied Meng Hao. “Yielding to and complying with the Heavens is well and good. Unending persistence is fine, too. However, I cannot choose either of those. He was like the Perfect Foundation, not permitted by Heaven and Earth, and the target of extermination by Tribulation Lightning. However, he would continue onward. That was how he differentiated himself from others; his path was not one of inflexible adherence to the rules. ”

• “Along the path of the Dao of alchemy, if a hundred flowers bloom, who has the right to permit only the Mudan peony to exist? Cannot the lesser peony and the orchid also coexist? Thus is birthed the flower garden. If the medicinal plant garden only contained one medicinal plant, how could the Dao of alchemy come into being? ”

• “Most people are not capable of truly seeking death; the desire to live is ever-present. The only people who will truly seek death are… those whose lives are a living hell!”

• “When a painter observes millions of mountains, then paints one, perhaps his painting contains the essence of the mountains he observed. However, the mountain he paints… is not real. It emerges from his imagination, and is what he believes a mountain to be. In truth, he has already forgotten the first mountain he ever saw, because he has seen too many. He has also forgotten the feeling he experienced when he gazed at that first mountain’s peak. Millions of streams fuse together to become a great and boundless river. But that river… is no longer the stream it once was. It is the amalgamation of many waters, fused together and indistinguishable. That first tiny stream which dreamed of being a river is now dead, killed by the very process it desired. The process of his pursuit causes the painter to forget that first mountain, and because of that, the very reason he wished to paint a mountain in the first place. The process of becoming a river causes the stream to lose itself. Its will is diluted as it becomes a river, and then it is gone.” As he spoke, Meng Hao’s voice grew louder.”This is my third question. By fusing many schools of thought, you lose yourself. You think you have benefited, but in reality, you have no path of your own. If you have no ideal of your own to adhere to, then you have observed millions of mountains, but forgotten why you wanted to paint a mountain to begin with! Without principles of your own to stick to, then you are a stream that has become a river. However, such a river has no soul! That, is true death!” Meng Hao flicked his wide sleeve. His words poured into Chen Jiaxi’s ears and sent his mind spinning. As Cultivators, we must adhere to our own set of principles. As alchemists, we must adhere to our own Dao of alchemy. Acquaintances and other schools of thought can bolster or support our confidence. But we must never allow the process of the search to result in losing our own ideal. If the heart is unyielding, nothing can ever supersede it. This type of heart may seem as if it contains transformations, but in reality, is stable, a foundation. From beginning to end, it will never disappear. It will always exist. An unchangeable heart”

• “Because the self never changes, the heart can tolerate the ever-changing transformations of the sun and moon, the maelstroms of Heaven and Earth, and those arduous journeys through thousands of crags and tens of thousands of torrents.”

• “As people grow in life, they form nets to fall back on”

• “Heaven and Earth are just resting places for the myriads of living creatures. Time represents the passage of hundreds of generations of passing travellers.” A smile broke out on Meng Hao’s face. Life is a journey, every turn of which is filled with new scenery. This path that he tread now contained his mark. Whether the mark was shallow or deep didn’t matter. That was because, it was his choice. “Maybe my path hasn’t even arrived.” He shook his head. Perhaps in the future he would realize what his purpose in life was. For the moment, he still didn’t know. Since he didn’t know, he wouldn’t force himself to choose. When traveling, it is never possible to know what unfathomable things might occur. That is what makes it beautiful.”

• “Cultivators have what it takes to stand up to Heaven and Earth. Cultivators have the stubbornness to never bow their heads, no matter how bloody the battle. That is a Cultivator. To me, a Cultivator is someone who stands, covered in blood, hair snow white, facing a host of enemies. And yet, no matter the danger, no matter how difficult the path, a Cultivator will grit his teeth, lift his head up and laugh! In this manner, he will become a legend! That is what a Cultivator is to me.”

• “Entombed on the Earth, but desirous of a return to life in the Heavens….”

• “There are some things I hesitate to do, but after I do them, I feel no regret.”

• “Sometimes, the meaning of an entire life can be only because of a chance meeting.”

• “What Cultivators truly cultivate, is self-confidence, and even more importantly, self-awareness. I have to say that … I, Meng Hao, do not dare to call myself a straightforward and upright person. Nor am I a gentleman, or a man of honor. But I always repay the kindnesses shown to me!

• “In Confucianism, there is a concept of a path of justice that contains two parts. One part involves being kind and tolerating others. The other involves taking action when necessary. After entering the Cultivation world, Meng Hao also had his own path. This path had nothing to do with Cultivation, but rather, personal principles. Meng Hao’s principles also contained the concept of justice, a justice with two parts. One was the law of repaying kindnesses. The other was bringing death in response to attacks! Cultivation is about developing confidence. Cultivation is about learning how to conduct oneself!”

• “Sowing contains reaping, reaping contains sowing. Everything that happened before was all sowing. Karma was reaped after I led the Crow Divinity Tribe out of the north all the way to the Black Lands. “It is similar to repaying kindnesses. The kindness is the sowing of Karma, and the repayment is the reaping of it! “Karma is about cause and effect. I… understand now.”

• “Life and death oppose each other but also exist in a cycle. Without life, how could there be death? And without death… what could serve as a contrast to life!?”

• “Within the sea, time is forgotten. Endless coldness, knows no years.”

• “Death is oftentimes quite simple. Life is oftentimes quite fragile.”

• “Emotions… are not a hindrance,” he murmured. “Emotions… are what make life complete.”

• “The world is an ever changing system of relationships and structures”

• “Some say continuing to do the same thing over and over again is the definition of insanity. On the other hand you say if at first you don’t succeed try try and try again.”

• “I can not only imagine artificial intelligence evolving spontaneously on the internet, but I can’t tell you that it hasn’t happened already. Because it wouldn’t necessarily reveal itself to us.”

• “Civilisation is always about four square meals away from ruin.”

• “On the internet nobody knows if you are a dog.”

• “Time is like a dream. It’s impossible to tell what is true and what is false. When you dream, you see others. Perhaps in the world of others, the dream version of you appears. Or perhaps our lives are like an invisible bubble that could pop at any time, and cause us to awaken. Who dreams of you, and who you dream of… this is truly a difficult riddle to explain….”

• “I thought that when I saw you, I would have the world. I didn’t know that within your dreams, you already had me.”

• “Ten thousand things, all in this breath grasping hold of emptiness, there really is nothing to say. Why are people so busy? Just for this one breath, People say busy, busy; mine, mine. Busy a whole lifetime for Me’. When this one breath is let off, you let go of this whole universe, why not let go from the start?”

• “You want to talk about real. Show mean thing that is real. There is nothing real from the start. Every morning to night, gathering things, big and small, valuables, money name and recognition; gathering it all up into your lap. Busy your whole life for nothing, acting like a thief, why not put all this energy into liberation? Put this mind to the Way. Everyone in the world is controlled by this, shed this control and then you’ll be free, content, liberated. Though there are words to speak, none of this is real. Talk and talk, like flowers falling from heaven its all worthless. If you think what you are grasping is real, theres no good in that, you can’t take it with you.”

• “I realised people can’t escape birth and death. The people who make you so happy, the people you can’t live without, they leave you.

• “Before he realized what was happening, the feeling of the passage of time appeared in Meng Hao’s heart. He sighed inwardly. Sometimes, it is only when encountering old friends that such a feeling will give rise to sighing and sobbing.”

• “After all, the most moving thing of all is love…. And although romantic love is beautiful, it pales in comparison to the selflessness of family love”

• ” The love of a father is more reserved, more silent, like a mountain. When you are a child, your father is your guardian angel. When you are a teenager, things change. He becomes an obstacle. After that, you come to view yourself as the superior, with him beneath you. Once you reach middle age, though, you look at that mountain and you suddenly realize that he has been there all along, watching you proudly. However arrogant you were, however selfish and narrow-minded, he would forgive you. Forgive you without even saying a word. You will feel forlorn, and will suddenly come to a realization. That… is the love of a father. When you have it, you might not feel it deeply. However, once you lose it, you lose the Heaven of your heart! When a child wishes to care for a parent, only to find that the parent is no longer there, well… that is a sorrow that gives rise to the most profound of weeping.”

• “Living and dying. It can be a departure, but also a beginning.”

• “If you believe it to be a sea of bitterness, then a sea of bitterness it is. If you believe it to simply be scenery on the path of life, then scenery it is…. The sea of bitterness never ends, but the scenery does.”

• “Many years ago, there was a withered slave on this mountain who said that life is pain, and that he wished to free himself from the sea of bitterness. That sea is like an inescapable flame which can burn everything. “Afterwards, he called this place Withering Flame, and made a solemn vow that he would eradicate the sea of bitterness. He would ensure that all living things no longer experience bitterness, but rather, freedom! “If you were in his place, what would you do?!”He was right, but also wrong,” murmured Meng Hao. “This could be viewed as a sea of bitterness, but also… not. If you believe everything to be bitterness, then it is. If you believe that everything is not bitterness, then it is not. “Leaping into the pit of fire represents death. Reappearance at the bottom of the volcano represents birth. The climb up the mountain represents the process of life…. “I would not swear to eradicate this place. Nor would I sink myself into cowardliness. What I have… is the determination to set my foot where I wish to set it. I control my own fate. I may not be able to control my own birth, but I can decide how I die. “And the final destination will definitely NOT be the pit at the top of the volcano.”

• “The path of life does not just run from the bottom of a mountain to its top….”

• “The great ancestor once said that rain… is born in the Heavens and dies in the Earth. The passage between those two places is its entire life….”

• “You can’t push things. Push hard and you get hardships. Everything’s a trial. You can’t be afraid of hardship. The more the hardships, the more you move forward.”

• “The truths of life and death are something that cannot be understood by someone who has not died.”

• “The Eternal is something that exists eternally within me. No living thing in Heaven and Earth can do anything to take it away from me. Even the will of Heaven and Earth itself would be incapable of wresting away the Eternal which belongs to me! “The Eternal is a type of determination, an overbearing attitude! “What is mine, belongs to me alone!”

• “The deepest expression of love is simply to stay with someone….”

• “Men do not, at times, talk like that. Sure some individuals with an X and Y chromosome like you may say something like that, but we do not call them Men. We call them perverts, abusers, or rapists - not Men. Real Men don’t do that and wouldn’t even think to say that. You will hear a lot of people tell you what Men do or what it takes to ‘be a Man’. The vast majority of it will be total garbage. If you want to be a Man, forget about machoism or sexual conquest. Being a Man is not about that. It’s about protecting those around you who are weak or innocent - maybe a child being bullied or your own children. It’s being awake at all hours of the night to warm a bottle, change a diaper, change the sheets on a wet bed or even worse. Men get puked on, pooped on, bled on and cried on. It’s about being open with someone, vulnerable and accountable. It’s admitting your mistakes and failures - in all its ugliness - and seeking forgiveness, over and over and over again. Real Men play dress up and enjoy tea parties and will make a complete fool out of themselves just to hear a child laugh. They cry, even weep, when the situation calls for it. They respect, honor and cherish women because all of them are human - created in the image of the Creator. It’s tough being a Man. Hardest work you’ll ever do. So when someone tries to justify abhorrent words and d by sullying your good reputation as a Man - be angry and speak up. Don’t let them define you down by their conduct. In short - be a Man.”

• “Never forget, the word cultivation 修行 is made of two characters, 修 which implies studying and practice, and 行 which implies action. It is not enough to just have 修, the studying and learning. You must also have 行, action…. You must always strive forward; that is the way to reach the pinnacle of power!”

• “Without the presence of despair, if someone is given hope, they might not attach too much importance to it, especially if they have a steadfast heart and an unchangeable Dao. However… if you torment someone to their limits and place them in the midst of despair, then give them a sudden scrap of hope, an opportunity to be extricated, then most people would not hesitate to grab that chance.”

• “Before the world appeared, before the beginning of Heaven and Earth, before time could even be calculated, perhaps… there were no such things as Immortals. Therefore… how did the first Immortal come to be?! That first Immortal definitely walked his own path. He must have tried many things, and must have suffered many defeats before he finally found the correct path. The first person to succeed called himself Immortal, and that is how Immortals came to be. It must have occurred in that way. Therefore, I can do the same thing. I, Meng Hao, will become an Immortal in MY way!”

• “A youngster who is angry but speaks nothing of it is truly significant”

• “There is a fine line between a genius and an idiot and that line is possibility.”

• “The first step of the Purification stage was to concentrate one’s mind. The mind is the human’s core of spiritual strength. To explain it clearly, “it’s the thought that counts”. If one’s thought was concentrated and strong enough, then it would turn into a certain power. Although it may sound easy, in reality it’s not. Even if an ordinary person struggled extremely hard and imagine that they can fly freely in the sky, they are still trapped on the ground. This is because the power of mind depends on the strength of one’s soul, and the soul’s strength depends solely on talent and is unrelated to one’s effort.”

• “A fourteen year old kid aroused himself again from disappointment and loss. The time taken was indeed too little. He had to appreciate all of his past experiences and the things that he would experience soon but of course the benefits that he experience won’t be liked by others. He had no time to feel disappointed, he could only keep trying. If not succeed, then die. These five words were most prominent in his mind.”

• “He realized that matter how he followed his heart and calmed his mind, he couldn’t completely diminish vanity and some other feelings.”

• “But what should we do? There are so many villains in the world. Unless you mimic me and hide in mountain to farm, there will always be some changes that you have to accept.”

• “With a mirror, one can adjust their clothing, but they can also adjust their attitude.”

• “There was no rule saying that when two people sit together, they must speak. Sometimes it’s fine to just sit there quietly. Even if they need to converse, they don’t need to speak. A simple gesture will suffice.”

• “Time, is the only standard with which to judge the world.”

• “Even if there hasn’t been anything similar in the past, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible for the future.”

• “Any life that could calmly face and challenge death was worthy of respect.”

• “Wanting to reach the other shore, really does require boundless wisdom.”

• “A child that is overly honest, will easily cause others to get angry over their words. That’s because an honest child speaks the truth”

• “What is destiny? There are numerous ways to express this one word: The rich and poor, bitter experiences in the course of life, the uncertain ups and downs of life, or perhaps the mysterious divine intervention? If the destiny is really unknowable and also an immutable existence, then its presence should not have any significance in the first place. When the heavenly book was born into the world, the people began to practice (cultivate). They started borrowing the strength of the heaven and transformed it into their own natural strength, but the cultivators would naturally not accept this assertion. They would want to think that the destiny is derived from their own dauntless spirits and the courage they possess to make a change according to their wishes. Each cultivator has an initial connection with the world and his destiny is determined by the arrangement of stars in the sky. Therefore, the people’s understanding of their destiny is ultimately dependent on the boundless ocean of stars that appears in a starry sky. Since ancient times, the stars in the sky, regardless of their position or brightness, are given the same value. They are solemnly and eternally illuminating the world. It is said that there are infinite lines joining these seemingly countless stars to form infinite complex patterns which cannot be fully portrayed. Looking at the starry sky, many people would feel their hearts racing and beating rapidly in a response to their praise for the beautiful scene and the complex patterns hidden in this boundless ocean of stars. It is very natural to think that something of extremely profound significance is hidden within these patterns.”

• “The world doesn’t have the road because the road is under your feet. Only you can decide which road you must take and that is what decides your unique journey. Only you can choose your own position on this stage we call the world. Therefore, there is no such thing as fate, but only choices we make and they are entirely in our control.”

• “Therefore, there is no such thing as Fate, but only choices.”

• “But how beautiful wasting one’s life in this manner was. And how beautiful it was to have a life to waste in such a manner.”

• “The positions were relative, and the appearances were also relative. As positioning changed with landmarks, the appearances changed with environment. If one wanted confirm one’s position, one needed to also confirm the position of the surrounding landmarks. If one wanted to examine the unvarying and objective truth, then should not one first understand how the environment affected the objective reality?”

• “Ten thousand streams, each with a different scenery, but in the end they all join the ocean.”

• “Martial Granduncle said that they couldn’t waste their limited lives on unlimited trifling matters.”

• “To cultivate the Dao is to cultivate the heart. One’s nature determines one’s fate, and it will also decide how far one is able to walk in the Dao.”

• “This time, he would have to get even more serious to live—to live so that death could see.”

• “Senior said, even if you try your best till the end and end up finding out that it was still impossible to change fate, then you can only appreciate and enjoy everything life has brought you.”

• “Yet just like death, no matter how many preparations you make, when it finally makes its appearance, you realise that you still aren’t prepared.”

• “To confide their deepest feelings to each other? Was this a phrase? He wasn’t too sure. It was very much a strange and alien emotion that he had never touched on before. That was a very sweet sort of emotion, and yet it also made one afraid, uneasy, but this made one yearn for it. Most importantly, the sorrow and joy elicited by this emotion was so intense that it at times seemed more important than all else.”

• “A casual dot of ink could also be the dot of an eye. An ordinary brushstroke could at times bring an entire painting to life.”

• “At times, the things and encounters of the world were truly very coincidental, very unfathomable.”

• “As time goes by, the thoughts of people often change in ways that they would never have imagined at the very beginning.”

• “Even if you wish to put into practice your view of the world, there is no need to rush to do it all at once.”

• “The word ‘impossible’ had no meaning to him. Because he was not allowed to think it impossible.”

• “Rumors often arise from the truth, and at times, the truth may be even more bizarre than the rumor.”

• “It was at this moment that a clear and cold voice could be heard through those layers of white curtain. “The road of cultivation is long and endless, but since you’ve already stepped upon it, how can you stop? As long as you incessantly press forward, there will come a time when you walk to that day. There’s no need to worry about whether you arrive early or late, let alone a need to care about victory or defeat, and why should the slander or praise of the world disorder your heart? Could it be that you haven’t even understood this yet?”

• “Whether it’s human nature or the human heart, you cannot test them, because when you begin to think about methods to test them, that would mean that you have already begun to doubt.” The Pope lastly said, “And doubt is the source of all misfortune.”

• “If you were to know that only several dozen days remained of your life, how would you pass your time? Compile all those things you wanted to do but never did into a wishlist and then sell your home and fields and go off to achieve these things? Or would you hide away in some dark corner of your room, your face bathed in tears every day? Or would you disregard all morals and laws, indulging in your deepest desires and evil thoughts?”

• “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.”

• “I always tell the girls, never take it seriously, if ya never take it seriously, ya never get hurt, ya never get hurt, ya always have fun, and if you ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends.”

• “I didn’t invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella.”

• “Some people have a hard time explaining rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t think anyone can really explain rock ‘n’ roll. Maybe Pete Townshend, but that’s okay. Rock ‘n’ roll is a lifestyle and a way of thinking… and it’s not about money and popularity. Although, some money would be nice. But it’s a voice that says,

• “Here I am… and fuck you if you can’t understand me.” And one of these people is gonna save the world. And that means that rock ‘n’ roll can save the world… all of us together. And the chicks are great. But what it all comes down to is that thing. The indefinable thing when people catch something in your music.”

• “Music, you now, true music - not just rock n roll - it chooses you. It live in your car, or alone listening to your headphones, you know, with the cast scenic bridges and angelic choirs in your brain. It’s a place apart from the vast, benign lap of America.”

• “You CANNOT make friends with the rock stars. That’s what’s important. If you’re a rock journalist - first, you will never get paid much. But you will get free records from the record company. And they’ll buy you drinks, you’ll meet girls, they’ll try to fly you places for free, offer you drugs… I know. It sounds great. But they are not your friends. These are people who want you to write sanctimonious stories about the genius of the rock stars, and they will ruin rock and roll and strangle everything we love about it.”

• “When and where does this “real world” occur?”

• “In Carl Jung’s opinion, we all have a sixth sense - intuition. When you meet someone and you suddenly feel like you can’t live without them. This could be the memory of a past love from the collective unconscious. Or it could just be hormones.”

• “Adolescence is a marketing tool.”

• “Look at this—an entire generation of Cinderellas, and there’s no glass slipper.”

• “The sands of time cannot be stopped. Years pass whether we will them or not … but we can remember. What has been lost may yet live on in memories. That which you will hear is imperfect and fragmented, yet treasure it, for without you it does not exist.”

• “There are forces circling us that we aren’t aware of. Sometimes I wonder if we can ever understand the true motives of the people around us. They all seem to have secrets. It is the way of the world. Ignore all the schemes and trust in the nature of each person”

• “Being a magician has always been about, in part, accruing power. Power over yourself, the elements, the future. But power, as you all know, does not come cheaply.”

• “Magic doesn’t come from talent, it comes from pain.”

• “Kady: Why can’t anything just be fixed. Penny: Life, I guess.”

• “The truly intelligent person will never reject the slightest chance of survival.”

• “It was darkest before dawn. When these words were usually spoken, the meaning often desired was that as long as one was able to endure this darkest hour, one would be able to welcome a bright and beautiful morning, the principle being that hope was forever. However, when dawn truly came, just what did it have to do with that darkest hour? Time was life and once it went, there was no turning back. There had never been any connection between another person’s light and one’s own darkness.”

• “To cultivators, life is an extremely long course of events. In this course of events, we will encounter many challenges, feel much despair, and this is our predestined fate. And how should we confront this predestined fate? To happily live on as if given a new lease on life, or to undergo serious contemplation before finding ourselves once more, that is the greatest distinction.”

• “The past is the past; such is time. Similarly, the movement of the stars, the changes of fate, all proceed forward, and so we can only look forward.”

• “If you want to live forever, you have to be powerful enough to walk out into the heavens. That’s a very long road, and you can’t let yourself get distracted by the scenery along the way. You have to walk the path and live life without any regrets!”

• “There were few things in life as terrifying as two women who hated each other….”

• “There was nothing without risk. Even walking on the street, one might be killed by a rock falling down from the skies. Even when eating, one might choke to death.”

• “Dripping water can eventually tunnel through a rock”

• “Hahaha, that’s my boy. Right; don’t easily give up or betray your good friends and brothers! If you can so easily sacrifice them…then you’ll never be able to make any true friends and brothers! If you wish for others to be willing to risk their lives for you, you have to treat them with sincerity, understood?”

• “The path of Immortal cultivation is filled with many dangers and obstacles. Thus, with each step, you need to leave a firm footprint as you walk forward in a stable manner. Your heart must be stable as well. This is indeed true”

• “However…everything in this world is divided into yin and yang,” Patriarch Subhuti said. “Although it is important to be stable and solid, it is also important to be sharp.”

• “The path of Immortal cultivation… your goals should be distant and grand, with Pangu and Nuwa as your models. The path of Immortal cultivation…it requires you to lower your head and watch the road, for you to remember to maintain a solid foundation. Do not merely think about soaring into the skies; when a bird soars too far, its eggs might be stolen and destroyed. It will perish, its Dao gone. The path of Immortal cultivation…it requires caution. It is a boat that will sail for ten thousand years that you must control with care. The path of Immortal cultivation…it requires sharpness. Only with a heart that is filled with a desire to charge into the heavens can you walk even farther on this path.”

• “How to make your goals grand but not too high…how to be cautious and yet have the desire to charge into the heavens…you will need to handle this yourself. The world is divided into yin and yang, and between yin and yang lies the heart.”

• “Good. That’s the attitude I like to see. Defeat isn’t frightening; what’s frightening is not even having the courage to try.”

• “But there are no absolutes in life. There’s always a chance.”

• “Stupidity does not mean you have the power to speak unreasonably, nor is it something that requires respect.”

• “Skill from diligence; incompetence from indulgence. I dare not slack off.”

• “What will people think of your ‘s cience’ two thousand years from now?” Mr. D continued. “Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That’s what. Oh, I love mortals—they have absolutely no sense of perspective. ”

• “There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.”

• “A Dark time comes. My time. If it offends you. Stop Me.”

• “I think you’re enough like me to understand. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can’t let a god take care of me … or my son. I have to … find the courage on my own. ”

• “Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related, for better or worse … and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.”

• “The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation,” she said.

• “Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed.”

• “Happily Ever After doesn’t exist. Every day you wake up and decide to love your partner and your life—the good, the bad and the ugly. Some days it’s a struggle and some days you feel like the luckiest person in the world.”

• “When you commit to someone, you don’t actually know who you’re committing to. You know who they are today, but you have no idea who this person is going to be in five years, ten years, and so on. You have to be prepared for the unexpected, and truly ask yourself if you admire this person regardless of the superficial (or not-so-superficial) details, because I promise almost all of them at some point are going to either change or go away.”

• “Relationships exist as waves, people need to learn how to ride them.”

• “You can work through anything as long as you are not destroying yourself or each other. That means emotionally, physically, financially, or spiritually. Make nothing off limits to discuss. Never shame or mock each other for the things you do that make you happy. Write down why you fell in love and read it every year on your anniversary (or more often). Write love letters to each other often. Make each other first. When kids arrive, it will be easy to fall into a frenzy of making them the only focus of your life…do not forget the love that produced them. You must keep that love alive and strong to feed them love. Spouse comes first. Each of you will continue to grow. Bring the other one with you. Be the one that welcomes that growth. Don’t think that the other one will hold the relationship together. Both of you should assume it’s up to you so that you are both working on it. Be passionate about cleaning house, preparing meals, and taking care of your home. This is required of everyone daily, make it fun and happy and do it together. Do not complain about your partner to anyone. Love them for who they are. Make love even when you are not in the mood. Trust each other. Give each other the benefit of the doubt always. Be transparent. Have nothing to hide. Be proud of each other. Have a life outside of each other, but share it through conversation. Pamper and adore each other. Go to counseling now before you need it so that you are both open to working on the relationship together. Disagree with respect to each other’s feelings. Be open to change and accepting of differences.”

• “The wine god sighed. “Oh, Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.”

• “Poseidon put his weathered hand on my shoulder. “Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names…well, it usually says more about them than it does about us. ”

• “Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding. Do you believe me?”

• “You can’t beat me, Oliver. Yes, you’re younger and you’re faster, yet you always come up short against me. Wanna know why? Because you don’t know, in your heart, what you’re fighting for. What you’re willing to sacrifice. And I do.”

• “So you’ll atone for one murder, Robert, by committing hundreds, thousands?”

• “Nothing is bred that is weaker than man.”

• “You are so blinded by your hate for him that you don’t realize the damage that it’s doing in your own life. To your family.”

• “You’d be surprised the power revenge can give you.”

• “I’m giving up a lot so maybe I thought the universe owed me one.”

• “Dead people don’t want anything, that’s one of the benefits of being dead.”

• “Home is a battlefield. Back home, they’re all trying to get you. Get you to open up, be somebody you’re not sure you are anymore.”

• “The strongest of the warriors are time and patience. ”

• “A man cannot live with two names.”

• “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

• “Boys have dreams so go chase them, youth is your capital. Youth represents the infinite possibilities that the future holds. FIGHT!”

• “This is life, who can you blame?”

• “However….. right when they were about to leave, Luo Feng’s family was a bit hesitant, since there were way too many memories in this home. However, people have to go higher!”

• “The waves in the back always push the ones in the front in the Yangtze river, so of course each generation has to be stronger than the next”

• “So, this world is simple. People respect those with high status and look down on those with low status. If a rich person runs out of money, it’s over for him. If someone with a great position loses that position, his authority will probably disappear too. Position and money are external, only your own strength is truly reliable”

• “Nobody can predict the twists of life”

• “The path to aim for the limits of life is filled with difficulty. Of course I can’t shy away from any challenges! Pedestrians can get hit by a car. Even in a sector, a dropped vase could hit your head. Nothing is absolutely safe!”

• “Man tended to believe that when he learnt any new information, he understood and knew everything. It’s not only till later when he learns more that he realizes how ridiculously wrong he was before. Without even a grasp of Earth’s many species of life and principles, he bases on simple deductions that the whole universe and milky way, and even further cannot have any other forms of intelligent life other than man! How dogmatic. What a joke. The endless seas have yet to be fully explored by Man. What’s more, the universe is so much bigger than the sea, a trillion times maybe? Not even close! The limitless universe, can’t possibly be judged by the humans on earth. Isn’t this synonymous with the story of the frog in the well, thinking that the world and sky is only as big as his well?” Hong shook his head, “The civilizations that exist in the universe, race and ethnicities, are complex and mysterious beyond compare.”

• “The people and kingdoms from hundreds of thousands of years back have turned to dust long ago. Compared to the endless march of history, where kingdoms and empires rise then collapse, personal grudges and enmities are so meaningless and small.”

• “Last night I hugged my pillow and dreamt of you. I wish that someday I’d dream about my pillow and I’d be hugging you”.

• “Love will travel as far as you let it. It has no limits.”

• “That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow”

• “A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.”

• “To hear, one must be silent.”

• “It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”

• “A man would know the end he goes to, but he cannot know it if he does not turn, and return to his beginning, and hold that beginning in his being. If he would not be a stick whirled and whelmed in the stream, he must be the stream itself, all of it, from its spring to its sinking in the sea. ”

• “Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them. I understood the principle intuitively that night as I heard the last volunteer swing the gate closed behind us.”

• “We all can be only what we are, nothing more, or less.”

• “What man has no ill intent in the silence of his soul?”

• “Who is to say what is only a story and what is truth disguised as a story?”

• “Many good and solid men would say so,” the old man told him, looking up at the stars, “good men who will live out their lives believing only in what they can see and touch. But there’s a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible?”

• “The wizard leaned back against the rock and looked out over the hills, as if seeing more than was there. His tone was sorrowful. “Because, Richard, many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as their oppressors. They wish to have a leader who will cut the taller plants so the sun will reach them. They think no plant should be allowed to grow taller than the shortest, and in that way give light to all. They would rather be provided a guiding light, regardless of the fuel, than light a candle themselves.”

• “Murder is the way of all things, the way of nature,” Zedd repeated. “Every living thing is a murderer.”

• “Life for the strongest. There is no sympathy for the slain, only admiration for the winner’s strength.”

• “If someone digs a hole, and it fills with rainwater, where is the fault? Is it the rain’s fault?”

• “Years from now, our past will be a story - a story of long days and lonely nights, hardwork and lack of sleep. We’ll live each day having intimately known the pain of being apart. We’ll appreciate and embrace our time together knowing how lucky we are to have made it through and we’ll find solace in the promise of a future together.”

• “Contrary to what the cynics say, distance is not for the fearful; it’s for the bold. It’s for those who are willing to spend a lot of time alone in exchange for a little time with the one they love.”

• “It’s not a bug – it’s an undocumented feature.”

• “Programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.”

• “I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are. ”

• “We do have a lot in common. The same Earth, the same air, the same sky. Maybe if we started looking at what’s the same instead of what’s different… well, who knows. ”

• “But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew he wasn’t happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn’t think what else to do.”

• “You exist inside a spring that can’t be replaced.”

• “As if you can see right through me, into my heart… Always, out of nowhere, you… just show up.”

• “Isn’t it funny how the most unforgettable scenes can be so trivial?”

• “Even it the depths of the darkest oceans, some light always pierces through.”

• “She’s merciless. That unbending gaze even from the back, she wont let me give up. The one who was being supported..was me. Thank you. Thank you.”

• “After struggling, losing my way, and suffering… the answer I arrived at was so laughably simple…”

• “I’m… going on a journey. The applause raining down. Pursuing that moment when my music reached them. Pursuing that sight of her with her back to me. until one day, for sure, I’ve pulled even with her… until that day comes.”

• “I knew all along. The ghost of my mother was a shadow of my own creation. An excuse for me to run away. My own weakness. Mom isn’t there anymore. Mom… is inside me.”

• “The moment I met her, my life changed. Everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I felt, all the scenery around me… started to take on color.”

• “I want to hear it again, yet I don’t want to hear it. I want to see her, yet I don’t want to see her. What do you call this kind of feeling again?”

• “A lump of steel, like a shooting star. Just seeing the same sky as you makes familiar scenery look different. I swing between hope and despair at your slightest gesture, and my heart starts to play a melody. What kind of feeling is this again? What do they call this kind of feeling? I think it’s probably called..Love. I’m sure this is what they call love.”

• “I look like I’m suffering, huh? That’s not good… but of course I’d be suffering. I mean, I’m gonna sail in charted waters, right? Both, taking on a challenge and creating something. It is painful, but it’s fulfilling. So thank you. For sweeping away the dust that had collected on my body. .. For encountering me… ever since that day… my world, even the keyboard… became colorful.”

• “You know, I discovered something. Everyone has something… something deep inside their hearts. For some, it might be enmity. For others, admiration. Wishes, a craving for the spotlight, feelings that one wants to deliver, feelings for ones mother. Everyone was supported by their own feelings. I realize now that, perhaps, no one can stand alone on stage.”

• “Letting you go was never easy because the half of my heart joined you and left me.”

• “How can I forgot about you, when everything about you, already became a part of me?”

• “We’re all afraid, you know.. to get up on stage. Maybe you’ll mess up. Maybe they’ll totally reject you. Even so, you grit your teeth and get up on stage anyway. Something compels us… moves us to play music.”

• “We’re all connected. Just like the notes are intermittently connected. It’s shared by us all. Through music, with the people you know, with the people you don’t know, with all the people in this world.’

• “It’s not just allies who support each other. From your enemies, you learn so much and gain so much. Until the day you meet again… Just knowing they exist helps you to withstand the loneliness. Those who compete, even if they’re enemies, help each other out.

• “Even though I’m bitter over losing, even though I’m depressed, even though my ankle hurts, and my eyes are smeared with tears…even though I’ve never felt worse…I wonder why the stars are sparkling like this. The scent of the music room in his hair. I can hear his slightly ragged breathing. His shoulder, wet with tears, is so warm. I am by his side. I wish time would just stand still.”

• “In my next life, I want to be me, and meet you again.”

• “If I can get my target to move as I want, I’ve succeeded as a Hunter.”

• “Ha-ha these humans are definitely foolish creatures. Think as hard as those weak brains of yours can manage. Do you humans ever listen to the cries of mercy coming from pigs and cows you slaughter?”

• “I was trying to take the easy way out by running away from everything. No matter the pain, I will keep living. So when I die, I’ll feel I did the best I could.”

• “If you want to get to know someone, find out what makes them angry.”

• “You should enjoy the little detours. To the fullest. Because that’s where you’ll find the things more important than what you want.”

• “A beast in human’s clothing understands better than anyone how people want to be treated.”

• “You must be prepared to face the worst possible scenarios. Because harsh reality strikes without warning.”

• “Whenever humans encounter the unknown, they tend to lose perspective.”

• “When I say it doesn’t hurt me, that means I can bear it.”

• “I do not fear death. I fear only that my rage will fade over time.”

• “The only principle is that there are no principles.”

• “Skill is one thing, and caution another.”

• “Even the fastest eye can be fooled.”

• “Qualification isn’t something we have to talk about. The ones who are not okay with their success can go through training until they are.”

• “I never imagined how frustrating weakness could be”

• “Who wants to have their life planned out for them.”

• “Hunters are a bunch of egomaniacs. We set aside everything else to get what we want.”

• “Human potential for evolution is limitless.”

• “A prayer comes from the heart”

• “Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.”

• “If that monster is your darkness, then I have a reason to fight it, no?”

• “The art of hunting is aiming for the moment when the target is busy hunting its prey!”

• “It’s pointless to mope over the validity of someone else’s success. If you’re unhappy about the results, keep moving yourself forward until you are satisfied.”

• “Prosperous cities tend to attract all sorts of nasty people.”

• “The countless dragons that rained down were less significant threats than the humans in the sky.”

• “An apology is a promise to do things differently next time, and to keep the promise.”

• “Order is the barrier that holds back the flood of death. We must all of us on this train of life remain in our allotted station. We must each of us occupy our preordained particular position. Would you wear a shoe on your head? Of course you wouldn’t wear a shoe on your head. A shoe doesn’t belong on your head. A shoe belongs on your foot. A hat belongs on your head.”

• “My friend, you suffer from the misplaced optimism of the doomed.”

• “Wilford: Curtis, everyone has their preordained position, and everyone is in their place except you.

Curtis: That’s what people in the best place say to the people in the worst place.”

• “You’ve seen what people so without leadership. They devour one another.”

• “I believe it is easier for people to survive on this train if they have some level of insanity. As Gilliam well understood, you need to maintain a proper balance of anxiety and fear and chaos and horror in order to keep life going. And if we don’t have that, we need to invent it.”

• “Assume everyone will betray you and you will never be disappointed.”

• “Perhaps it’s impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”

• “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them… I destroy them.”

• “I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not

• “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

• “Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.”

• “Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”

• “Early to bed and early to rise,” Mazer intoned, “makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes.”

• “There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”

• “So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”

• “Human beings are free except when humanity needs them. Maybe humanity needs you. To do something. Maybe humanity needs me—to find out what you’re good for. We might both do despicable things, Ender, but if humankind survives, then we were good tools.”

• “He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him. ”

• “Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.”

• “I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it’s due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don’t have to do it often.”

• “If only we could have talked to you, the hive-queen said in Ender’s words. But since it could not be, we ask only this: that you remember us, not as enemies, but as a tragic sisters, changed into foul shape by fate or God or evolution. If we had kissed, it would have been the miracle to make us human in each other’s eyes. Instead we killed each other. But still we welcome you now as guestfriends. Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.”

• “We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams.”

• “The seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.”

• “What else should you be? Human beings didn’t evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing’s the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we’d be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

• “No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.”

• “All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better. So why do I hate my life?”

• “This is what historians usually do, quibble about cause and effect when the point is, there are times when the world is in flux and the right voice in the right place can move the world. Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, for instance. Bismark. Lenin.”

• “There was no doubt now in Ender’s mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no on ewould save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can’t kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.”

• “Nature can’t evolve a species that hasn’t the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

• “He is dead, she thought bitterly, because we have forgotten him.”

• “He toyed with the idea of trying to be like the other boys. But he couldn’t think of any jokes, and none of theirs seemed funny. Wherever their laughter came from, Ender couldn’t find such a place in himself. He was afraid, and fear made him serious.”

• “There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will teach you how to destroy and conquer.”

• “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

• “You see, George, you’ve really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?”

• “Modesty is a virtue but overdoing it was just being false.”

• “To be punctual meant to exist as a point, meant that as well as to arrive somewhere on time. Constant existed as a point - could not imagine what it would, be like to exist in any other way.”

• “Hope?” he says. “There is always hope, John. New developments have yet to present themselves. Not all the information is in. No. Don’t give up hope just yet. It’s the last thing to go. When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.”

• “Rather than giving them bread, teach them how to cultivate wheat. Truly, there are plenty who would become rotten themselves if all they did was receive bread.”

• “Doing the same things, or perhaps coming to resemble the person you hate, you loath, isn’t an uncommon story.”

• “It seems you’ve got a lot on your mind. Worry all you want. When you look back on it, you’ll always feel like a fool asking yourself why you worried over something like that.”

• “Humans have nothing but unknowns. Even if they act like they know everything, that’s surely a lie. That’s why there’s no way but to spend your whole life learning it. There’s plenty of wisdom you won’t find in a book, and I agree with your opinion, Lyle.”

• “The mountains have not a care, yet the snows whiten their hair; water feels not the world’s woe, yet its face wrinkles when winds blow”

• “Spirit is the mind, it is your thoughts, your imagination. Spirit is when you remember as you dream in your heart. This is what we call thought, and it is also spirit.”

• “Whatever you brag about the most is what you lack the most. Whatever it is that you want others to know you own the most of is what you want to possess most of.”

• “Death is not terrifying. The thing that is terrifying is the moment before death.”

• “People always speak of heaven and earth but, what is heaven and earth? It means all that is under the sky! If the heavens had a soul, it would be an oppressive one! The oppression of the heavens is invisible. We can only endure it and while we endure it we must learn to live with it happily. If we do not, are we to fight against heaven? To my understanding, perhaps this question meant that besides going up against heaven, could there be any other way to fight against destiny… Once you grow up, perhaps you’ll have a deeper understanding of it. If that day truly comes and you have attained the power which allows you to do as the words say, then perhaps you can think of a third way to fight instead of submitting to destiny or rebelling against it.”

• “Among all those living on the land, who would be able to see the end of the horizon?”

• “You can only see the surface of the muddy water on the ground and never the bottom.”

• “Spirit is Dao,” Tian Lan Meng stated calmly. It is not thought, because thought in itself is narrow, but Dao is endless. Dao is a realm that those from other realms seek. Every person has a different Dao. The great Dao is boundless, and those who obtain Dao will see through the world, and in turn, we can say that we have found and become the truth. I read this sentence from an ancient scroll before. It is a sentence that is spoken in the other worlds… If you stay on your Dao but have no method of solving a particular problem now, that method will eventually come to you. If you have the skills and power, but have strayed from your Dao, then you cannot use your skills, and your power will forever stay stagnant!”

• “All things in the world differ in sizes. My understanding towards the word is narrow and small to you, and the Dao you speak is a huge thing that seeks to reach a state where you understand the world. It is like two spots, like two different directions, and like two different extremes. Su Ming closed his eyes and continued, unhurried, “To me, the heart is aspiration, and the spirit is a realm. You are walking on the Dao of the heavens, and I’m walking through the narrow gate on the earth, but once I walk past that gate, what I’m searching for is just to merely open my eyes. Do you understand what I’m saying? The last sentence written in the beast skin scrolls suddenly surfaced in Su Ming’s mind. “You cannot see… the world that I see.”

• “You are always copying,” Su Ming said slowly, lifting his head, “because you think that the spirit is Dao. You search for something abstruse, that’s why you can copy many things, because you think that as you search for it, you will find your Dao eventually. I don’t know what is the Dao you speak… but from what you said just now, I can understand that while the Dao is an abstruse concept, it exists. It exists within the world, perhaps all the plants, trees, flowers, and stones have a Dao within them. What I seek isn’t a Dao, but to have my mind acting as my aspiration, to have my spirit as my realm, and when I open my eyes, I will draw out my heart’s desires… This is the reason why I can draw, but you can only copy.”

• “There is a saying that goes that the people who are lonely may be different from each other, but all of them stare at the moon.”

• “Willpower is an abstract term. It’s like a person’s resolve, like a beacon of light in a person’s life… However, it is still an abstract thing… If no one attacks me, then I won’t attack, but if someone attacks me, I will definitely kill him! In a battlefield, it doesn’t matter whether I’m taking the initiative or remain in the passive, if anyone attacks me, then unless he is killed by someone else, then I will definitely kill him! That’s right. I’m afraid of death… I’m afraid that once I die, I won’t be able to find my way back home. I’m afraid that once I die, all these mysteries will disappear. I’m afraid that once I die… I won’t be able to open my eyes.”

• “When two adversaries meet at a narrow path and cannot back out from a fight… the courageous one will win”

• “Courage is also a type of presence. This is not recklessness. It’s instead a presence akin to a mountain, one that will make your enemies breakdown due to your tenacity. Courage is also a method to subdue your enemies. It is also the characteristic you need to become an upright man when you journey through the world! Su Ming, remember my words… perhaps some day, you will truly understand it.”

• “Once you overcome your fears, once you have a taste of what courage is like, how would you feel..? I hope that when that time comes, I will still be by your side and hear you tell me how you feel. A feeling that I have won against myself.”

• “The place where I was born still did things according to the laws of the universe. When I was born, the Berserkers had weakened… If the heavens are heartless, then we will all be separated. The earth was heartless, and it made my Dark Mountain die. If the heavens have eyes, then why do they never see that my world is plunged into eternal darkness? If the deities have souls, then why did they divide the sky and seas to the south and north? I kept my duty to the heavens, so why did they not let me see the darkness of night? I kept my duty to the deities, so why did they tear me into pieces and scatter my memories?! If the heavens don’t have eyes, then I will step on it and watch myself seal the heavens! If the deities don’t have souls, then I swear I will slaughter the deities and become the Emperor!”

• “Perhaps the greatest sorrow in the world is when you don’t even know why you’re sad…”

• “Everything in the world is a cause, if there are no intense changes and if there is nothing that would turn the tides of the world, then it would be difficult for us to see the real nature of people, who are affected by the things in the world…”

• “Are we all allowed to impose our will on others because our power is greater than theirs?”

• “Perhaps death was not terrifying at times. What was horrifying was endlessness, an eternity of not being able to die and not being able to perish until the soul itself became numb, until all will was lost, all that made a person, turning him into… an undying soul, Imperishable living corpse…”

• “Do you know for what reason do all manner of living practice cultivation? For what reason do we strive to become strong?” the Candle Dragon asked softly with its ancient voice. Su Ming could not answer that question, and the Candle Dragon had not expected him to anyway. “That is because we all have flaws within our bodies. Each race contains different flaws, and the root cause for cultivation is for us to mend those flaws… But it is not a simple task to mend all our flaws. Usually, over a countless number of years, only one or two living souls in a single race can be found capable of doing so. “The methods each race use to discover their own flaws and set out to mend them are different, but in the end, we all need the power of the World Plane… Over the long years of my life, I had some form of contact with Immortals before. The constitution forming the Immortals’ cultivation method is divided into three steps. The first step does not touch upon the power of the World Plane, but starting from the second step, they will go through this so called Nirvanic Rebirth. All the flaws in their bodies will be mended and they will obtain new life. At that time, they will be practicing the power of the World Plane. “The third step is Hollow. It is the critical moment for one when trying to achieve perfection as there’s fewer flaws within the body. If one can attain the ultimate completion, then he will have taken the fourth step. At that time, he will no longer have any flaws… and at that time, what he will pursue is the power of Plane Timelines!” The Candle Dragon’s voice gradually grew weaker. These epiphanies were the treasures of its life. “It is the same for all races, just like the Deities who are similar to the Immortals. Amalgamation, Great Vehicle, Ascension, Great Overarching Golden Immortality , and all the other states are in the end, just to mend all the flaws in people’s bodies.”

• “There is a binary opposite that exists in the world. If we say that one side of the binary opposite is being alive, then we can say that the other side of the binary opposite is being dead… but what exactly is death and what exactly is meant by the other side? Who can really say clearly? “Perhaps we can look at the boundary between these two sides as a mirror. When a person standing outside the mirror looks into the mirror, the person inside the mirror is also looking outside. He will see himself, but at the same time, he might also not be looking at himself. “Do you mean that the people in mirrors have their own lives, and the people outside the mirrors don’t know about it, and that you and I are in these mirrors?”

• “We must break our Life Matrices and tread on the path to find what is lacking in our lives. This is called Life Privation!”We must learn of what we lack in ourselves like we know of the regrets the world possesses and like we understand the changes in the world. This is Life Palace!”

• “When you learn who you are, you… are no longer you! When you no longer know who you are, you… will be you!”

• “What… is Life? It is vitality, because it is a form of inheritance we receive when we are born. It is also fate, because if we don’t have fate in this inheritance of life, our Lives will be incomplete… Life. Vitality. Fate. We are born with Life, but we have to wrestle our own fate from other people’s hands in the future to control it ourselves… The word Life involves people and the heavens, and fate is what separates humans from the heavens… Does it mean that we have to bow down to heaven before we can be whole and obtain Life to become humans?” Su Ming mumbled within the ball of blood, and at that moment, he opened his eyes. If Life means that we have to subjugate ourselves to the heavens before we can call ourselves humans, then the opposite can happen as well, we can still say that we have Life when the heavens bow down to us!”

• “If you do not have a place in your heart you call home, you will wander no matter where you are…”

• “What you see might not be the truth, and what you believe doesn’t exist… might not necessarily not exist.”

• “Thousands upon thousands are awake, but you are still asleep… Is it because you don’t want to wake up, or is it because… you believe yourself to be awake? What does it mean to be asleep, and what does it mean to be awake? All of this… is just the world you see, and no one else… can see it. It is like fate, you can choose to submit to it or to fight against it. It is like life, where moments of joy and sadness exist together. ”

• “If I’m not bothered by my past, then why should I be bothered by my future? If I don’t cling to the idea of who I am, then why should I think about who is me…? The high winds may be strong, but they cannot extinguish the flames in my heart. Sooner or later… they will set the world ablaze!”

• “But most of the time, happiness will only last for a short moment, because there is an eye in the world that belongs to loneliness, and it does not want to see too many beautiful moments in anyone’s lives. That was why it made fleetingness to be a constant companion of happiness”

• “This is a point.” As Su Ming spoke softly, a crystalline dot appeared at the spot where his index finger was pointing. I will draw towards the left and make a circle, and when I stop drawing… I will find that the end is in the same spot.” Su Ming’s right index finger started drawing towards the left and he drew a circle. The spot where the circle was completed was its beginning and its end. It was the point that fused both the beginning and the end together. This is reincarnation. Then if I draw from the right and make a circle, rotating from the end…” As Su Ming spoke, his right index finger started drawing another circle backwards from that dot. The spot that caused the circle to be complete… was still the same point. This is also reincarnation. When Su Ming finished speaking, an indefinable presence radiated off his body. That presence was not of those who had attained great completion in the Berserker Soul Realm, but was… a presence that surpassed Berserker Soul. It grew thicker and surrounded Su Ming’s body, causing the starry sky to erupt with a bang at the instant it descended and touched it. It was as if the area where Su Ming was had turned into a forbidden region for starlight. His hair flew while his eyes remained calm. His words contained endless wisdom, and they were echoing in the world. Reincarnation is a point, and that point… is Berserkers’ Realm Mountain. That point is the start and also the end. You can walk to the future from that point, and you can also head to the past. This point is also the mirror’s point. The mirror’s face is the normal world. It is where the past moves towards the future. It is then the opposite inside the mirror. Life and death move in opposite directions. The past and future move in opposite directions. It is just as I have understood it in Hidden Dragon Sect. It is like the process of winter moving to spring… because the people in the world of the mirror move from the future to the past. The Immortals are the face of the mirror. They live in the world outside the mirror and move from life to death. The Berserkers’ Yin Death Region is the world inside the mirror. They move from death to life… During that moment just now, I finally understood. The face and back of that mirror don’t make a complete cycle of reincarnation.” Su Ming shook his head, and a variety of emotions stirred up slightly in his heart. It is just like the existence of Yin and Yang. People only see these two faces, but they forget… that there is another point! The world outside the mirror belongs to the Immortals, and the world inside the mirror belongs to the Berserkers. But in truth, there is a mirror inside the mirror. If two mirrors were positioned opposite each other properly, then the endless darkness would then be the mirror inside the mirror!”

• “When you see the mountain, it is a mountain is the first stage. The first stage is in the beginning stages of a human’s life. It is pure and they have only just begun to know the world. Everything is new, and whatever they see, it is the truth. If anyone tells that person something is a mountain, they will believe that it is a mountain. When you see the mountain, it is not a mountain is the second stage. As you grow up, you will experience more things, and you will discover that there are problems in the world. The more problems you encounter in the world, the more complicated the world will seem. Many of the truths that you know will be turned upside down. The bad people will rule the world, and the good will find it hard to survive. People will start to get cynical and not believe in things so easily. At that time, people will start criticizing the present by saying how good the past is. Then, mountains and rivers will not simply be mountains and rivers anymore, because your view of things has changed. You start questioning your beliefs, and you start wondering whether the things you see are really what they seem. When you see the mountain, it is still a mountain is the third stage. Since staying in the second stage bears too much suffering, they will start climbing up this metaphorical mountain, which means to train their minds and hearts. At this stage, they will concentrate on doing what they want to do and not compare themselves to others, and since the mind is calm and not bothered by the things in the world anymore, people will find that there is no need for them to adjust their point of view to suit other people’s . At that time, they will feel free to perceive whatever they want in whichever way they want, hence you have: When you see the mountain, it is still a mountain, and when you see the river, it is still a river.”

• “You yourself have to change first, or nothing will change for you!”

• “Sake sure is nice. You can forget your troubles if only for a moment. You’ll have to remember them tomorrow though, and they’ll be even more painful than they were the night before. You can’t run away from things like this. Especially from things you really want to forget.”

• “I’ll protect what I want to protect.”

• “If you have time to fantasize about a beautiful end, then just live beautifully ‘til the end.”

• “Everyone’s carrying something that matters. You just don’t realize when you’re carrying it. It’s only after it slips out of your hand that you realize how heavy it was in the first place. So many times I thought that I’d never carry a load like that ever again. And yet, before I realized it, I was carrying it again. I’d feel so much better if I just got rid of it. But I just can’t bring myself to do it.”

• “There’s this one organ that’s even more important than my heart. You can’t see it, but it’s there. Because of it, I can stand tall, even if I’m all worn down, I can still walk. And if I don’t go, it’ll break. My soul will break. Even if my heart stops beating, it is still more important. It doesn’t matter if I’m old and can’t walk. It will still stand tall.”

• “When your friend is crying, cry with him. When your friend is worried, you should worry with him. And when your friend has an awkward bowel movement, then you must have an awkward bowel movement too. Shin-chan, if you are a friend, you should be able to share the other’s pain, no matter what. And Shin-chan, if your friend goes down the wrong path… then you must stop your friend, even if it ruins your friendship. That is true samurai friendship.”

• “Even if you lose all memory in your head, the ones engraved in your heart and the ones that exist in your soul will never disappear, no matter what happens.”

• “Life is like a mountain. You can say you have reached the top only after climbing back down.”

• “If you want to kill me, then go ahead and kill me. You kill those that you hate. You turn old those who are more beautiful than you. Even if you continue to do so, you will never obtain eternal beauty. Even if you did find the eternal youth you’re looking for…even if you wear those lavishly beautiful kimonos…I’ll say this straight from my heart: You’re ugly; your heart is truly laughably wretched.”

• “Life is just an important choice after another, keep going forward and watch how far those foolish choices can take you.”

• “Why change it? This is a life that you chose for yourself, and nothing will change that. You don’t need to fret, nor do you need to be embarassed. No one else can or should choose the path that you walk upon. Just puff out your chest, and walk proudly. There’s nothing wrong with your face. As long as your soul doesn’t get scarred, your face will remain beautiful”

• “Some things can only be seen through a tainted eye.”

• “If you run into a wall and pretend it doesn’t exist, you’ll never make any progress. The wall will never change, so you’re the one who has to change.”

• “Tears are handy for washing away troubling and sad feelings. But when you grow up, you’ll learn that there are things so sad, they can never be washed away by tears. That there are painful memories that should never be washed away. So people who are truly strong laugh when they want to cry. They endure all of the pain and sorrow while laughing with everybody else.”

• “Sometimes, it’s necessary to look back at the past in order to move on to the future.”

• “The night is in its darkest just before dawn. But keep your eyes open. If you avert your eyes from the dark, you’ll be blinded by the rays of a new day. So keep your eyes open, no matter how dark the night ahead may be.”

• “A prison, you say? You think you’ll be free if you go to the world above? A girl like you can never be free no matter where you go. After all, we humans are apes put in a cage called Earth. There is no difference between the world above and the world below. The only difference is which is bigger or smaller. People who pout about how confining the cage is can never be happy. They live their lives only seeing the iron bars. A true lack of freedom is when you cage your soul.”

• “It’s quite easy for humans to become adults, but to always have a child-like heart that makes everything joyful isn’t such an easy task.”

• “Don’t worry. When people break their old selves they embark a journey to find their new selves.”

• “Happiness depends on each person. If you think you’re happy, then you must be happy.”

• “Some lies are necessary for giving children dreams.”

• “There’s no such thing as parents who don’t think about their children. But there are few children who understand their parents feelings.”

• “There are two things people fear… those are death and embarrassment. Those who try to overcome death are just idiots, but I won’t laugh at those who try to overcome their embarrassment. I like those kind of idiots”

• “Planets are just places for people to stand on. Planets are just rocks. It takes people to make it a world. You can have as many “Earths” as you want. I only care about what’s inside.”

• “No matter how colossal a power you obtain, no matter how gigantic an army you bring with you, I ain’t scared. While you’ve abandoned a hundred, I’ve connected with a thousand. While you’ve destroyed a thousand, I’ve been helped by ten thousand. So what’s an army of a few thousand? We have protected everything as just three people.”

• “I choose my own battlefields. Not by my blood, but by my heart! I stand on the battlefield to protect what’s important to me. And if anyone stands in my way, I don’t care if it’s one of my kind, my brother or anyone else… I’ll crush them all!”

• “It’s as if you are stuck in some predetermined program, following some predetermined script. If you really want to live in reality, then fight against it. Break through destiny with your own hands, and build your own reality!”

• “There is no need for any proof. There is no need to create any. We just have to live every second to the fullest, and the traces of the path we lived will burn into the ground. That will serve as proof of our existence.”

• “No matter how beautiful a person may be, they will still age and ultimately - die. But even so, even if appearances change, don’t you believe that we have, in us, things that don’t change? Even as our bodies crumble, even as the months and years take their toll… don’t you believe that we all have something that time can’t spoil? Even if you cover us with wrinkles, we won’t lose to you. That’s because we know what beauty truly is.”

• “People need to live their life with a clear conscience. When you want to walk on a straight path, somehow you get yourself stained with mud. However, as long as we never give up, one day the mud on you will dry up and fall off”

• “Even if you can’t move anymore, or your back gets bent out of shape, it doesn’t matter! What matters is what’s inside! Not what someone looks like, dammit!”

• “What is right? What is wrong? In this mixed up world, deciding what is right and wrong is not easy. You can’t just go by somebody else’s rules. If you let yourself be controlled like that, you’ll just become a puppet that can’t make decisions on it’s own. You have to live by your rules.”

• “No matter how hard you blow, you can never extinguish our fire. As long as a single flare remains, the others can be relit.”

• “It hasn’t withered. I won’t let it wither. We might just be little branches, but if the branches break off, the tree really will wither. That’s why I won’t break off. Even if winter comes and the leaves fall off, even if the wind comes and all the other little branches break off… Even if I am the last branch left, I won’t break off. I’m sure we’ll be together till the end.”

• “Trying to shoulder the burden all by yourself? Don’t be a stranger. Weep and ask for help. Lean on me with your runny nose. Cry when you feel like crying. Laugh when you feel like laughing. When you’re tearing up with an ugly face, I’ll give you a good cry with an uglier face. When you’re laughing so hard your stomach hurts, I’ll laugh in a louder voice. That’s how it should be. It’s far better to get dirty while living true to yourself, than to throw away yourself and die a clean death.”

• “The country? the skies? You can have them. I’m busy just protecting what’s right in front of me. I don’t know what’ll happen to me in the future, but if something has fallen at my feet, then the least I can do is pick it up.”

• “The zipper is a window to society.”

• “The best way to live a full life is to be a child, no matter your age.”

• “It may be tough now, but the worst is surely yet to come. Keep that in mind, and you’ll be fine.”

• “That’s a good attitude. You should hate me more, curse me more, and detest me! Then you should take the power of that hatred and use it to survive in this rotten world”

• “If Only Life Was as Beautiful as It Seemed at First Sight”

• “There is no light for this who do not know the darkness. Live on and endure the shadows and brightness shall come your way.”

• “The more one tries to look away, the more one gets pre occupied. Once your heart is preoccupied, your sword will not be true. Then you will die. Dont be preoccupied with a single spot. See everything in its entirety effortlessly.”

• “Be aware of yourself. And accept yourself as you are. Thats where your training should begin.”

• “Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

• “Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the Theory of Relativity and Principles of Uncertainty: phenomenon that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday I believed that I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. At each point of intersection, each encounter suggests a new potential direction.”

• “I understand now that boundaries between noise and sound are conventions. All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended. One may transcend any convention if only one can first conceive of doing so. Moments like this, I can feel your heart beating as clearly as I feel my own, and I know that separation is an illusion. My life extends far beyond the limitations of me.”

• “Truth is singular. Its “versions” are mistruths.”

• “This world spins from the same unseen forces that twist our hearts.”

• “I believe death is only a door. When it closes, another opens. If I cared to imagine a heaven, I would imagine a door opening and behind it, I would find him there.”

• “Fear, belief, love phenomena that determined the course of our lives. These forces begin long before we are born and continue after we perish.”

• “There is only one rule that binds all people. One governing principle that defines every relationship on God’s green earth: The weak are meat, and the strong do eat.”

• “We cross and re-cross our old paths like figure-skaters.”

• “To be is to be perceived. And so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds that go on apportioning themselves throughout all time.”

• “You have to do whatever you can’t not do.”

• “I was not genomed to alter reality. No revolutionary ever was.”

• ” I will not be subjugated to criminal abuse!”

• “A half-finished book is, after all, a half finished love affair.”

• “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”

• “Books don’t offer real escape, but they can stop a mind scratching itself raw.”

• “Power, time, gravity, love. The forces that really kick ass are all invisible.”

• “Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

• “Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.”

• “Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”

• “What wouldn’t I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”

• “The better organized the state, the duller its humanity.”

• “How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.”

• “Anticipating the end of the world is humanity’s oldest passtime”

• “Why fight the ‘natural’ (oh, weaselly word!) order of things? Why? Because of this—one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.”

• “Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.”

• “What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.”

• “Women, oh, women! They’ll find the baddest meanin’ in your words an’ hold it up, sayin’, Look what you attacked me with!”

• “If war’s first victim is truth, its second is clerical efficiency.”

• “Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.”

• “The learnin’ mind is the livin’ mind… an’ any sort o’ smart is truesome smart, old smart or new, high smart or low.”

• “All rising suns set.”

• “Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people believe it.”

• “An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

• “Old Father Timothy offers this advice to his younger readers, included for free in the price of this memoir: conduct your life in such a way that, when your train breaks down in the eve of you years, you have a warm dry car driven by a loved one - or a hired one, it matters not - to take you home.”

• “He chiseled open the fault lines in the others’ personalities.”

• “Fear hardens caution, but boredom erodes it.”

• “One loses one’s eye in the lanes of sea phosphorescence & the Mississippi of stars streaming across the heavens.”

• “I envied my uncritical, unthinking sisters.”

• “If people praise you, you’re not walking your own path.”

• “It’s a small world. It keeps recrossing itself.”

• “all purebloods have a hunger, a dissatisfaction in their eyes,”

• “Old Ma Yibber spread the news that Zachry what came down off Mauna Kea weren’t the same Zachry what’d gone up, an’ true ‘nuff I s’pose, there ain’t no journey what don’t change you some.”

• “Blame its user, blame its maker, but don’t blame the gun.”

• “Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more. More what? I asked. Old Uns’d got ev’rythin’. Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big, but it weren’t big ‘nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil up the seas an’ poison soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was borned an’ babbits was freak-birthed. Fin’ly, bit’ly, then quicksharp, states busted into bar’bric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ‘cept for a few folds’n’pockets here’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.”

• “ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only “rights,” the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.”

• “There’s the blind, Mr. Grimaldi, there’s the willfully blind, and then there’s the soon to be retired.”

• “The dumbest dog can sit and watch. What takes brains is knowing when to look away.”

• “But there’s one thing you must remember. Whether you want it or not, once you have created bonds between you and other people, those bonds will never disappear.”

• “Never lose sight of your wish! And if you want to see the wish fulfilled … you must choose! No matter how painful the choice may be.”

• “All happiness and all unhappiness … stems from one having a desire. And that is why mankind will always make their wishes.”

• “All who make wishes are the same. When one wish comes into conflict with someone else’s wish … then one must make a choice. Either abandon one’s own wish … or crush the other’s wish for the sake of your own.”

• “The princess is strong. And because she’s strong, she’s fragile. If somebody doesn’t teach her that fact, she’ll break.”

• “I can’t do much yet, but even if I can do a little to help … I want to give it all I have! If a person doesn’t do anything, they never get any better. Doing one little thing, taking one little step forward … I gotta believe it will help build a better future!”

• “You’ll stay here with me?” “Yeah” “If I fall asleep like this … the first thing i’ll see when I wake up … will be you.”

• “The instand one gives up, that is when it all ends. Keep wishing. Wish strongly! Wish hard! Do not let it matter what kind of being you are! Do not let it matter what pressures others put on you! Continue to wish for that which your heart truly desires!!”

• “If you don’t want her to go, you should say it. Those jerks who can’t say a word no matter how much time passes … I just don’t get them. If they’re doing whatever the hell they want … then you should do what you want too. I hate those jerks who fool themselves into thinking that just because they clam up, nobody knows what’s going on with them!!”

• “Until we can be together again … we wait … and believe!”

• “I believe in the princess when she says that she’ll return to those waiting for her. So i’ll wait. It’s more painful to wait than to go along on the trip.” ‘Well, I can’t wait.’ “Are you that afraid to believe in someone?”

• “But there are no coincidences in this world. There is only Hitsuzen. You were destined to meet each other.”

• “I’d rather stay the way I am until the last moment. Even if a monster beats me and I die. I won’t lose to this game or this world, no matter what.”

• “A person’s strength in this world is just an illusion.”

• “They say your character is built by life’s challenges, so keep soldiering on young man.”

• “Even in a world like this, he was really living.”

• “I’d rather trust and regret, than doubt and regret.”

• “It is pointless to question who someone really is. All you can do is believe and accept. Because the way you perceive someone is their true identity.”

• “When I began thinking of him as I fell asleep, I stopped having nightmares. I began to look forward to seeing him. For the first time since I arrived here, I was happy.”

• “Life isn’t just doing things for yourself. It’s possible to live in such a way that other people’s happiness, makes you happy too.”

• “Sometimes the things that matter the most are right in front of you.”

• “I cried alone every single night. It felt like every day that passed here stole another piece of my real life away. After I cried, I’d go and fight as hard as I could. My only thought was winning, moving forward and getting stronger.”

• “I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”

• “If you choose to lock your heart away, you’ll lose it for certain”

• “Better to not know which moment may be your last alive to be mystery of it all.”

• “Did no one come to save me just because they missed me?”

• “Develop amnesia conveniently and forget everything you heard!”

• “Please make sure the bed is empty before getting in it!”

• “Getting wrapped up in worries is bad for your body and spirit. That’s when you must short out your logic circuits and reboot your heart.”

• “Everybody makes a wrong turn once in a while”

• “Strong Pokemon. Weak Pokemon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with all their favorites.”

• “A Caterpie may change into a Butterfree, but the heart that beats inside remains the same.”

• “I see now that one’s birth is irrelevant. It’s what you do that determines who you are.”

• “There’s no sense in going out of your way to get somebody to like you.”

• “It’s more important to master the cards you’re holding than to complain about the ones your opponent was dealt.”

• “Do you always need a reason to help somebody?”

• “You see, sometimes friends have to go away, but a part of them stays behind with you.”

• “If we live a monotonous life, do we get used to it and stop thinking about how to change it?”

• “If somewhere in this world there is someone who understands you, it feels like that person is right beside you, even if youre as far apart as the end of the land and the top of the sky”

• “So, this is my power… but what is my purpose?”

• “The Earth is so pretty, so blue…”

• “A good friend left me and, I miss her, every day… but I… I know we’ll always be friends forever!”

• “To all of my beautiful future children who taught me how to believe. I offer all of you now my sincerest hopes, and wishes that the future world will become more and more beautiful. And that is exactly the kind of world you find yourselves in.”

• “We’re all architecting our lives day by day, and when our life comes to an end, people will see what mattered to us most by looking at what we built. When you look back on your life, you’ll see what you’ve built and you’ll see what you’ve loved…and you’ll realize that you build what you love. Your most powerful artifact in which you build your life upon are people. When you understand this, you begin to realize that your building blocks are the relationships you have, sustain, and influence. don’t just want to be a builder of applications. I don’t just want to be a builder of systems. I don’t just want to be a builder of brands. I want to be a builder of people, using those avenues to do so. When lay on my deathbed, I want to look back on my life and see that what I built was people. I want to see that what I built was the product of a love for humanity. You build what you love. What are you building?’

• “Which is worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”

• “Sanity is not a choice Marshall, you can’t just choose to get over it.”

• “What if while you were looking into them, they were looking into you?”

• “Wounds can create monsters and you are wounded, martial. And wouldn’t you agree, when you see a monster, you must stop it?”

• “God loves violence. I… I hadn’t noticed. Sure you have. Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It’s what we are. We wage war, we burn sacrifices, and pillage and plunder and tear at the flesh of our brothers. And why? Because God gave us violence to wage in his honor. I thought God gave us moral order. There’s no moral order as pure as this storm. There’s no moral order at all. There’s just this: can my violence conquer yours??

• “Do you know how pain enters the body, Marshal? Do you? Depends on where you’re hurt? No, it has nothing to do with the flesh. The brain controls pain.”

• “That’s the beauty of it. Mental Patients make the perfect subjects, if they talk nobody listens to them!”

• “He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you’d been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.”

• “This world can only give me reminders of what I don’t have, can never have, didn’t have for long enough.”

• “The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?”

• “If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would oherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It’s a no-win situation. It’s a death penalty really.”

• “Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.”

• “How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?”

• “Everyone wants a quick fix. We’re tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don’t even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress.”

• “She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.”

• “He lay on his side, looking out at the sea. So blue at this time of day, so vibrant as the afternoon died around it. He lay there feeling the breeze on his face and the sea spreading out forever under the darkening sky and he felt so small, so utterly human, but it wasn’t a debilitating feeling. It was an oddly proud one. To be a part of this. A speck, yes. But part of it, one with it. Breathing.”

• “I can’t take second or third. I can only take first.”

• “Dare to think. Before your dreams are realized, never establish any limits yourself, never give yourself a ny excuse to shrink back, any justification for failure. Only in this way do we have the chance to take those seemingly distant dreams and make them into genuine reality. This, is precisely my first lesson to you.”

• “The identities we live in end up being the roles we play, whether it’s princess, empress, wife, or mother. “But as we act longer and longer, playing more and more roles, we often forget just who we are. “If you can’t even be sure of what role you’re playing, how can you determine what it is you want? If we want to a get clear and truthful answer, we have to look back at where we came from, reverse time to where it all began. We have to remember what we first saw when we opened our eyes to this world”

• ” Kind people need to be even more on their guard… Being on guard requires the corresponding ability, or else it will be nothing more than a joke.”

• “How could one prevent oneself from being confused by external things? How could one possess an unshakable will and self-confidence? Only one word needed to be remembered: heart. All one needed was to convince themselves. If one could convince oneself that this way was correct, that it was in accordance with one’s heart, then…one would naturally be following one’s heart. This sounded very simple, but it was not actually simple at all If one searched in the deepest depths of one’s soul, if one ensconced oneself in a dark room cut off from the world, how many people could truly say that they were without regrets? Who could so firmly believe that everything they had done was correct?”

‘Waters can carry a boat, and they can also capsize them. Shang Xingzhou continued, “Of course, following the current does not mean obedience. The boat can only hope that the waters are calmer, that there are fewer waves, that there is not too much resistance.” Yu Ren gestured, “But in the final analysis, the boat must still revere the existence of the waters.” “The Duke of Wei once said, ‘The resentment of this minister need not be feared; only the people should be feared. They can carry the boat and capsize the boat, so they must be treated with deep caution.3 How could I not fear them?” Shang Xingzhou looked into You Ren’s eyes and said, “But positions are relative. Since you are the boat, you cannot think too much about what the water is thinking.”

• “To walk through the world is like sailing a boat across the ocean. One must be cautious and mindful, and one cannot go against the current, or else one will capsize the boat.”

• “The person who understood you the most was naturally not a relative, or else Xue Xing Chuan would not have died so miserably and then almost had his corpse exposed in the plains after his death. And the person who understood you the most was also not necessarily, as often written in books, your enemy, because you would always have some wariness towards your enemy and develop many safeguards against him. The person who understood you the most was also not necessarily your friend. To be friends until your hair turned white was a beautiful thing, but you would spend too little time with each other, the distance between your two cities would be too far. When you met, you would always drink wine while recalling old times, speculating on the future, cursing your past teachers or the current government. There were few opportunities to chat about more in-depth things. So the person who understood you the most was often your partner at work. With year after year, day after day of working together, it would be very difficult to not understand each other. You would drink together many times, chatting about many in-depth things, and for the sake of both open and hidden competitions, you would remember all these things with remarkable clarity, preparing to use them at any point in the future. For instance, he might learn which restaurant is your favorite for buying box lunches and you might learn which restaurant has his favorite noodles. He might learn which group leader you hate the most and you might learn which TV channel is his favorite. He might know of all the girlfriends you’ve talked about in the past few years while you would know how many people he’s been cheating on in the past few months. On the morning after Christmas Eve, the two of you might even come out of the same pub and then smile at each other, because this pub was the place where the company could negotiate the best discount.”

• “Every person is born a small person.” The Pope smiled and gestured with his two hands to show length. “But every person will grow bigger. There are some matters that you can learn as long as you are willing to learn them.”

• “Position is relative, as is importance. To create a balance between position and importance, thus preventing the entire world from dancing according to the whims of people like us, is what I have wanted to do throughout these past few years.”

• “To eat when you are hungry, to sleep when you are drowsy, to take medicine when you are sick, and to bury someone’s body after they die, these are truly the greatest principles.”

• “That which is most impervious to poison is the human heart, and the human heart is human nature, and human nature is to live-what’s wrong with that?”

• “Thousands of years pass, the white clouds wander carelessly, things are the same but the people are not, the sapling has grown into a lush canopy’. But in the end, there were still some people or matters that could not be let go.”

• “Good people do not live long.”

• “All things have a beginning and an end. Even those of Concealed Divinity and those above, who have obtained Grand Liberation, have a birth and death.”

• “Things easily decay, but the effects they leave are everlasting. Ultimately, one must see how deep the tracks are that one has left.” The Divine Empress turned and looked at her, continuing, “And those tracks come from your and my footsteps, follow the directions of our hearts.” Xu Yourong asked, “And if someone blocks your way?” The Divine Empress answered, “So we need the strength to kill all those who obstruct us. Only this way can we march the world forward according to our desires, to brand our souls upon history such that even the reprimands of tens of thousands of people after we depart cannot wipe it away. Only this way can we get close to true eternity.”

• “Affection is the world’s most cheaply bought item, virtue an excuse for the weak to protect themselves None of them are important.” Xu Yourong asked, “Then what is the most important thing?” The Divine Empress looked up towards the sky and leisurely said, “To exist.” After a moment of silence, Xu Yourong asked,

• “How should we exist?” “How to exist? Take all that is wondrous, see how long can one exist, how can one make the soul inextinguishable, and proceed in the direction of the Great Dao.”

• “When the sky is shattering and stars are falling, when you find it simply impossible to make any sort of rational judgment and can only rely on what your heart is feeling at that moment, that is what your heart truly feels.”

• “No matter who the target is or what difference exists between the choices, in the end, you still made a choice.” “So?” “Sweet or salty, to peel or not to peel, to live or to die these have always been questions.” The Elder of Heavenly Secrets looked into his eyes, his voice calm. “Life is formed of innumerable choices. Who can avoid them completely?”

• “On the verge of death, even the words are kind, let alone one’s intentions.”

• “Do you know when people are the most courageous?” “When confronting death?

• “It’s not wrong, but there is another situation…because of love.” The Divine Empress looked out the window at the dark palace and continued, “In other words, when driven by passion.”

• “Good people aren’t guaranteed to be rewarded, and they might not even live well, so why do we have to be good people? How should we love? Why should we live??”

• “In hazy dreams, I curse the time passed, Ah my home, thirty-two years have gone. The red flag stirred the peasant to take up the halberd, While the black hand held high the tyrant’s whip. Only because one seeks grand goals are there many sacrifices, And I dare to order the sun and moon to shine over new skies. In joy, I see the wave after wave of beans, And the heroes from all-over returning in the evening mist.”

• “Dont tell me what they said about me. Tell me why they were so comfortable to say it around you.”

• “Well the meek were supposed to inherit the earth, but instead it has e to the young-the technically inclined, those who stare into video games rather than into their own souls.”

• “Despise chaos. Create order”

• “For the human brain,” Edmond explained, “any answer is no answer. We feel enormous discomfort when faced with insufficient data and so our brains invent the data- offering us, at the very least the illusion of order-creating myriad philosophies, mythologies, and unseen world.” religions to reassure us that there is indeed an order and structure to the unseen world”

• “The roads to salvation are many.Forgiveness is not the only path.”

• “The truth is something you should find without magic”

• “It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”

• “But it is one thing to read about dragons and another to meet them.”

• “From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”

• “Go to bed; tired is stupid.”

• “You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do… .”

• “It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man’s hand and the wisdom in a tree’s root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.”

• “For a word to be spoken, there must be silence. Before, and after.”

• “In that moment Ged understood the singing of the bird, and the language of the water falling in the basin of the fountain, and the shape of the clouds, and the beginning and end of the wind that stirred the leaves; it seemed to him that he himself was a word spoken by the sunlight.”

• “Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.”

• “Infinite are the arguments of mages”

• “And he would watch the snow falling, thin and ceaseless, on the empty lands below the window, and feel the dull cold grow within him, till it seemed no feeling was left to him except a kind of weariness.”

• “I am yours by parentage and custom and by duty undertaken towards you. I am your wizard. But it is time you recalled that, tough I am a servant, I am not your servant.”

• “Heal the wound and cure the illness, but let the dying spirit go”

• “But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death’s kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way.”

• “The path never reached it, though it always seemed to be about to.”

• “And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life’s sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.”

• “Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”

• “The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds. There places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given wholly to the Ones we call Nameless, the ancient and holy powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, the ruin, the madness”

• “Who said you fall in love only once? Love is such a versatile feeling Its different every damn time Sometimes its a warm feeling Like the feeling of coming home Alternately it is also an all consuming fire Which threatens to burn you inside out It is the breeze and the storm It is a hearth and a inferno It will nurture you and destroy you It will make you strong and weak It will lift you up and bring you down But it is am amazing feeling every time It makes even an hour an eternity And two years feel like tomorrow It is the most amazing kind of bitter sweet The feeling of two souls interwined To hold and to cherish till fate do us part”

• “Daybreak makes all earth and sea, from shadow brings forth form, driving dream to the dark kingdom.”

• “You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.”

• “What are you watching there?” the Archmage asked, and the other answered, “A spider.” Between two tall grass blades in the clearing a spider had spun a web, a circle delicately suspended. The silver threads caught the sunlight. In the center the spinner waited, a grey-black thing no larger than the pupil of an eye. “She too is a patterner,” Ged said, studying the artful web. “What is evil?” asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. “A web we men weave,” Ged answered

• “With your whole mind you sit with painful legs without being disturbed by them. This is to sit without”

• “Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.”

• “But engineering isn’t about perfect solutions; it’s about doing the best you can with limited resources.”

• “If you have a question,” my folks would say, “then find the answer.”

• “Part of that is because if you dispense your own wisdom, others often dismiss it; if you offer wisdom from a third party, it seems less arrogant and more acceptable.”

• “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.”

• “So that was a setback. But I kept my mantra in mind: The brick walls are there for a reason. They’re not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something”

• “You appreciate the part of me that didn’t get angry because two `things’ we own got hurt. But the flip side of that is my belief that you don’t repair things if they still do what they’re supposed to do. The cars still work. Let’s just drive ‘em.”

• “Not everything needs to be fixed.”

• “Let’s saddle up and ride.”

• “But, look, I’m a scientist who sees inspiration as the ultimate tool for doing good.”

• “Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams, too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.”

• “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.”

• “It took a long time, but I’ve finally figured it out. When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do.”

• “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.”

• “There is more than one way to measure profits and losses. On every level, institutions can and should have a heart.”

• “When we’re connected to others, we become better people.”

• “Sometimes, all you have to do is ask, and it can lead to all your dreams coming true.”

• “Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore?”

• “What do we mean by G.o.d? Being detached from life and death as well as being one with heaven and earth like G.o.d! In this aspect, we are no different from the elementalists. They also believe that they have a common origin with heaven and earth and they will live forever. In short, they are following the path of the cultivators from the past. However, we are different. We walk in between the path of life and death. We treat life and death as an integral whole, that they are similar. Our theory is profound. Walking between life and death is akin to walking on a tightrope between high cliffs. Below our feet is an unknown abyss. In order to succeed, our hearts and minds must be resolute. We must not hesitate, else we will definitely fall into an situation with no hope of reprieve.

• “You have to complete the path you chose even if it’s going to kill you,” the red-dressed girl said plainly.

• “If one works for it and he doesn’t succeed, then it can be said that his fate had already been decided. However, if one never even tries then serves him right.”

• “One can either choose to let others control his life, or he can choose to control others’ lives.”

• “There were four seasons in life. The spring of adolescence, the summer of youthfulness, the autumn of confidence, and the winter of obsolescence. However, there would only be one cycle of life.”

• “From mankind’s perspective, the world was ever-changing. Perhaps from the world’s perspective, it was mankind that was ever-changing.”

• “A strong body needs an equally mighty soul.”

• “You’re still young. When you’re older, you will understand that time is money. You won’t give your money to someone who has nothing to do with you, right? Then why are you wasting time on them?”

• “I feel that you’re like me: someone who has desire. My desire is to become a Grandmaster and defeat Dai Gang. I don’t know what your desire is and whether it is easier or harder to achieve than mine, but if you have a desire, you have to be hard on yourself. Mediocrity is not enough to make your desire come true.”

• “When a Grandmaster is alive, he defeats all heroes under the sky. When he dies, he stirs all clouds under the sky. Look, the sun and moon lose their splendor and the stars dim. The sky is so high, the earth is so vast. All living things gather to grieve. How heroic! How delightful! Living a life without being a Grandmaster is unsatisfying!”

• “If you’re short on money, everyone else is a beggar.”

• “He viewed each and every challenge from the previous half of his life as fate’s way of refining his very being. Not once did he lose hope, give himself up to anger, or whimper in sorrow. His heart was as pure as that of a newborn.”

• “A human mind was complicated yet centralized at the same time. It was a world… a complete, diverse world that was beyond mankind’s understanding. It could emit light and warmth like the sun, giving warmth to the souls surrounding it. However, it could also pile up shadows that were darker than the night in a secluded corner. It could be impregnable, enduring the cruelest torture and the deepest agony in the world. It could also be soft like an air bubble that could be shattered easily with a gentle poke from a crisp toothpick. Nobility and malevolence could be buried in the same tomb while courage and cowardice were like two vines that entwined each other. It was extremely difficult to make sense of them and tell them apart.”

• “As the saying goes, it is only when one experiences true knowledge that he finally understands how little he knows”

• “But magic is also an art, great lady,” the Murgo said. “There are many who think so,” Aunt Pol said, “but true magic comes from within and is not the result of nimble fingers which trick the eye.”

• “Everything is idiocy if you choose to look at it in the proper light,”

• “Why are the people all so unhappy?” he asked Mister Wolf.”They have a stern and demanding God,” Wolf replied.”Which God is that?” Garion asked.”Money,”

• “It is power that teaches patience; holding power, I mean. And you learn the price it exacts—which is something I never knew when I was your age and thought a sword and quick wits could deal with anything. I never knew the price you pay for power.”

• “Authority? You want the authority to create, to be noticed, and to make a difference? You’re waiting for permission to stand up and speak up and ship? Sorry, there’s no authority left. Oprah has left the building. She can’t choose you to be on her show because her show is gone. Youtube wants you to have your own show now, but they’re not going to call you. Dick clark has left the building. He’s not going to be able to get you a record deal or a tv gig because he and his show are long gone. Itunes and a hundred other outlets want you to have your own gig, but they’re not going to call you, either. Neither is rodney dangerfield or the head of programming at comedy central. Marc marondidn’t wait to be cast on saturday night live — he started his own podcast and earned a million listeners. Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission, authority, and safety that come from a publisher or a talk-show host or even a blogger who says “i pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you — that prince charming has chosen another house in his search for cinderella — then you can actually get to work. The myth that the ceo is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a hollywood myth. Once you understand that there are problems waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound. The opportunity is not to have your résumé picked from the pile but to make the pile irrelevant by leading without having to be asked. When we take responsibility and eagerly give credit, doors open. When we grab a microphone and speak up, we’re a step closer to doing the work we’re able to do. Most of all, when we buckle down, confront the lizard brain, and ship our best work, we’re becoming the artists we’re capable of becoming. No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.”

• “There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behaviour that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”

• “Deny not your own mortality.”

• “Names are like clothes, Durnik,” Silk explained. “We put on what’s most suitable for the occasion. Honest men have little need to wear strange clothes or strange names Those of us who aren’t so honest, however, occasionally have to change one or the other.”

• “Women are almost always angry with us for one reason or another. It’s one of the things you’ll have to get used to as you get older.”

• “Events are like horses,” Hettar told him. “Sometimes they run away. After they’ve run for a while, though, they’ll start to walk again, Then there’ll be time to put everything together.”

• “Patience, Excellency,” Silk advised. “The more we suffer, the greater the rewards in the end.”

• “I understand much better than you think, Garion. You know what your problem is? You don’t want to grow up. You want to keep on being a boy forever. You can’t though; nobody can. No matter how much power you have - whether you’re an emperor or a sorcerer - you can’t stop the years from going by. I realized that a long time ago, but then I’m probably much smarter than you are.”

• “Men’s minds ran to straight lines, but women thought more in terms of circles.”

Durnik smiled wryly. “I’m an ordinary man, Mandorallen,” he said, “Ordinary men live in fear all the time. Didn’t you know that? We’re afraid of the weather, we’re afraid of powerful men, we’re afraid of the night and the monsters that lurk in the dark, we’re afraid of growing old and of dying. Sometimes we’re even afraid of in ordinary men are afraid almost every minute of their lives.”

• “How can you bear it?” “Do we have any choice? Fear’s a part of life, Mandorallen, and it’s the only life we have. You’ll get used to it. After you’ve put it on every morning like an old tunic, you won’t even notice it any more. Sometimes laughing at it helps a little.” “Laughing?” It shows the fear that you know it’s there, but that you’re going to go ahead and do what you have to do anyway.” Durnik looked down at his hands, carefully kneading the mare’s belly “Some men curse and swear and bluster, he continued. Every man has to come up with his own technique for dealing with it Personally, I prefer laughing. It seems more appropriate somehow.”

• “People are grateful for a bit of direction when they’re confused. You can’t go through life being afraid of what you are. If you do that, sooner or later somebody will come along who’ll misunderstand, and you’ll have to do something to show him that it’s not him that you’re afraid of. When it goes that far, it’s usually much worse for you - and for him too. You don’t just jump in with help until you’re asked. That’s very bad form, Garion.”

• “The word love seemed, as he thought more deeply about it, to include a great number of things that at first glance did not seem to have anything whatsoever to do with it”

• “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

• “Which led to another thought: did all fathers feel this way when their sons became men? Men of achievement, of names that eclipsed the father’s? Was there always the sting of envy to temper the burst of pride?”

• “Thus the first object of the child’s hostility is identical with the first object of its love-its mother”

• “I hate the word interesting, everything is interesting. To understand what is important is very difficult and is what I think forces people to think deeply and mature.” Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”That is the only time a man can be brave”

• “A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is.”

• “Only staying active will make you want to live a hundred years.”

• “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

• “He lifted his hand and pointed at the beautiful burning flame image on the symbol paper and said, “The path of the martial artist is like this flame. Practicing the martial arts will only cause pain. The dangers are countless and the road is filled with obstacles. Everyone who walks down it will eventually turn to ash, but the true martial artist will be reborn from these ashes. Even if I was only a small and weak moth, I will walk into the flames without hesitation. I will fight my destiny for a one in a million chance that I will experience my own samsara and be reborn into a flaming phoenix. And even now, I am no longer a moth…”

• “My so-called inventions already existed in the environment,” Edison once said.

• “I’ve created nothing. Nobody does.”

• “Edison did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.”

• “To assemble the best that is within you and give it away. And to assemble with those you love to rekindle joy.”

• “The lion and the giraffe and the wombat and the rest do what they do and are what they are. And somehow manage to make it there in the cage, living the unexamined life. But to be human is to know and care and ask. To keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence hollering, “What’s it for?” at the stones and stars, and making prisons and palaces out of the echoing answers.

• “Without realizing it, we fill important places in each other’s lives. It’s that way with the guy at the corner grocery, the mechanic at the local garage, the family doctor, teachers, neighbors, co-workers. Good people who are always “there,” who can be relied upon in small, important ways. People who teach us, bless us, encourage us, support us, uplift us in the dailiness of life. We never tell them. I don’t know why, but we don’t. And, of course, we fill that role ourselves. There are those who depend on us, watch us, learn from us, take from us. And we never know. Don’t sell yourself short. You may never have proof of your importance, but you are more important than you think. There are always those who couldn’t do without you. The rub is that you don’t always know who.”

• “Writers aren’t exactly people … they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.”

• ” As mundane as our regular lives can be, sometimes, when we’ve had a great shock, that steady regular routine can be a God send.”

• “I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.”

• ” Memory is one of the more trivial functions of sentinence”

• “He had wanted to create, to be recognized, and to study. He was no different from legions of other scientists and scholars. He just happened to be the one who made it happen.”

• “Sometimes the truth is stupid.”

• “Which was better? To string it out as long as possible, as he had been doing, or to get it over with one way or the other?”

• “To remind you that deep beneath the layers of deviousness, you have a spark of decency. Perhaps you could blow on that spark occasionally.”

• “The most difficult things in the world Must be accomplished through the easiest. The greatest things in the world Must be accomplished through the smallest. Therefore the Sage Never attempts great things And so accomplishes them.”

• “You know, Richard, most people think the will to survive is the strongest instinct in human beings, but it isn’t. The strongest instinct is to keep things familiar.”

• “For years, psychologists have tortured rats by making them do things like run mazes for bits of cheese. The interesting thing about these experiments is that, when the scientists change the position of the cheese, the rats only try the same way three or four times before starting to explore other possible routes. When humans replace the rats, however, they just keep on and on and on, in the hopes that if they just do the same thing often enough they’ll get the desired result.”

• “A single enduring statement can grant immortality.”

• “Find the worst human being you can, and you’ll still find something worse by looking out the window at night.”

• “The moment you get up to prove one thing, you’ll be expected to prove them all.”

• “Most men cannot abide silence. Some fly into a rage. Some become clowns. Some confess all they know. Silence reveals much.”

• “I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.”

• “As much as we thirst for approval, we dread condemnation”

• “The deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important.”

• “Nobody knows for sure But he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality.”

• “We are interested in others when they are interested in us.”

• “A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.”

• “I judge people by their own principles - not by my own.”

• “Say about yourself all the derogatory things you know the other person is thinking or wants to say or intends to say - and say them before that person has a chance tosay them.”

• “So with men, if you would win a man to you cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart; which, say what you will, is the great high road to his reason.”

• “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home.That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

• “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”

• ” If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”

• ” A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

• ” Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?”

• ” In science it often happens that scientists say, ‘You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,’ and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”

• ” We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”

• ” You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”

• ” Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.”

• ” Fireflies out on a warm summer’s night, seeing the urgent, flashing, yellow-white phosphorescence below them, go crazy with desire; moths cast to the winds an enchantment potion that draws the opposite sex, wings beating hurriedly, from kilometers away; peacocks display a devastating corona of blue and green and the peahens are all aflutter; competing pollen grains extrude tiny tubes that race each other down the female flower’s orifice to the waiting egg below; luminescent squid present rhapsodic light shows, altering the pattern, brightness and color radiated from their heads, tentacles, and eyeballs; a tapeworm diligently lays a hundred thousand fertilized eggs in a single day; a great whale rumbles through the ocean depths uttering plaintive cries that are understood hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, where another lonely behemoth is attentively listening; bacteria sidle up to one another and merge; cicadas chorus in a collective serenade of love; honeybee couples soar on matrimonial flights from which only one partner returns; male fish spray their spunk over a slimy clutch of eggs laid by God-knows-who; dogs, out cruising, sniff each other’s nether parts, seeking erotic stimuli; flowers exude sultry perfumes and decorate their petals with garish ultraviolet advertisements for passing insects, birds, and bats; and men and women sing, dance, dress, adorn, paint, posture, self-mutilate, demand, coerce, dissemble, plead, succumb, and risk their lives. To say that love makes the world go around is to go too far. The Earth spins because it did so as it was formed and there has been nothing to stop it since. But the nearly maniacal devotion to sex and love by most of the plants, animals, and microbes with which we are familiar is a pervasive and striking aspect of life on Earth. It cries out for explanation. What is all this in aid of? What is the torrent of passion and obsession about? Why will organisms go without sleep, without food, gladly put themselves in mortal danger for sex? … For more than half the history of life on Earth organisms seem to have done perfectly well without it. What good is sex?… Through 4 billion years of natural selection, instructions have been honed and fine-tuned…sequences of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, manuals written out in the alphabet of life in competition with other similar manuals published by other firms. The organisms become the means through which the instructions flow and copy themselves, by which new instructions are tried out, on which selection operates. ‘The hen,’ said Samuel Butler, ‘is the egg’s way of making another egg.’ It is on this level that we must understand what sex is for. … The sockeye salmon exhaust themselves swimming up the mighty Columbia River to spawn, heroically hurdling cataracts, in a single-minded effort that works to propagate their DNA sequences into future generation. The moment their work is done, they fall to pieces. Scales flake off, fins drop, and soon—often within hours of spawning—they are dead and becoming distinctly aromatic. They’ve served their purpose. Nature is unsentimental. Death is built in.”

• ” The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”

• ” Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.” “Death is not terrifying. The thing that is terrifying is the moment before death.”

• “I don’t have any sense of propriety. I don’t have parents. In your eyes, I have neither any right nor status… But, my elder once told me that you only see one part of the rain in the world. You will never know how much rain there is when it stops… You can only see the surface of the muddy water on the ground and never the bottom… ”

• “If you stay on your Dao1 but have no method of solving a particular problem now, that method will eventually come to you. If you have the skills and power, but have strayed from your Dao, then you cannot use your skills, and your power will forever stay stagnant! I don’t understand the Dao’ meant by those in the other worlds, but now…”

• “A delusion starts like any other idea, as an egg. Identical on the outside, perfectly formed. From the shell, you’d never know anything was wrongs what’s inside that matters.”

• “You know the most dangerous thing about schizophrenia? The most dangerous thing is believing you don’t have it. That’s the trick. The mind killer. Your disease convinces you, you don’t have it. So, for example, one day in the hospital, you meet a girl and she has some friends and they tell you you’re not sick. You have super powers. And more than anything, you wanna believe it because that means you’re not crazy. It means you can fall in love and live happily ever after. But you know if you believe it if you surrender to the hope and you’re wrong, then you’re never coming back. ”

• “What is the universe without each sunrise? That’s how we judge our gods, not on their math but their poetry.”

• “Human beings are the only animal that forms ideas about their world. We perceive it not through our bodies but through our minds. We must agree on what is real. Because of this, we are the only animal on Earth that goes mad”

• “Ask yourself: what’s more terrifying? Fear, or the frightened”

• “You decide what is real and what is not. You. Your will”

• “Who teaches us to be normal when we’re one of a kind?”

• “Where the pessimist sees danger hiding behind every back, the optimist sees friendship. Which is why, when we encounter coincidence, we often see conspiracy. ”

• “We moved through a city of normals, soldiers in a secret war. We were the ghosts in a haunted house, the golem of myth. To the normal, we were just superstition, make-believe. Sometimes it felt like that to us too. To me, I was a woman who couldn’t be touched, in love with a man who wasn’t there. What was real?”

• “Please keep talking so we can all pretend that our problems are just in our heads.”

• “It’s a war, baby, this life. The things we endure. You said you saw the future, and it’s an apocalypse. Who survives that, the lovers or the fighters? They sell us this lie that love’s gonna save us. All it does is make us stupid and weak”

• “Is it such a terrible thing to feel sorrow for your enemy? What is he, except a brother with another name?”

• “If the idea of illness can become illness, what else about our reality is actually a disorder?”

• “I am a good person. I deserve love. ”

• “Do what you want. Take what you want. Gods make rules. They don’t follow them.”

• “You have your whole life to be old. But today, you’re still young.”

• ” You can make someone do what they don’t want to do, but there’s no force on Earth that makes you enjoy it.”

• “What if you’re not the hero? What if you’re just another villain? The real villain.”

• “Well, kid, you better learn to fly like a bird, because the age of the dinosaur is over”

• ” The best way to understand the mind is to build it”

• ” We have to learn about love before we can learn about hate. Otherwise, everything goes to hell”

• ” We can make anything we fancy in this arena of infinite promise, and this is what we come up with? Weapons? War? Surely we have more imagination than that.”

• ” We can fix this world. All the bad things. We just got to start over.”

• ” Time travel does not give one the opportunity to change oneself. But rather, to eradicate oneself and allow something else to form in the wake of what once was.”

• ” The secret of life. If you feel safe when you’re young, you will feel safe when you’re old.”

• ” The money is a tool, you see. Nothing more. Power. Because without power, who would listen?”

• ” People get too close. They touch you and you disappear. And then they’re inside. In your belly and in your head. And when you get back, there’s a smell. Someone else’s smell is inside your nose. And you check out. You tell people,

• “It’s fine. I don’t own my body.” You say, “My power is like a vacation. I get to be a tourist in someone else’s life.” Who cares if every time I come back home, I feel dirty?”

• ” No one who dies is really dead. You see that, right? The past changes, and the future disappears.”

• ” Love isn’t gonna save us. It’s what we have to save. Pain makes us strong enough to do it. All our scars, our anger, our despair, it’s armor. Baby, God loves the sinners best because our fire burns bright, bright, bright. Burn with me”

• ” It’s not crazy babies that worry me. It’s the men they become. Like a fire, falling in love with a fire. We try to smother them, put them out, but they just burn us up”

• ” If we don’t believe in change, then we don’t believe in time.”

• ” I tell them I’m sane, they think I’m crazy, and if I say, “You know what? You’re right, I am crazy,” then they up my dosage.”

• ” Do you know what love is? It’s a hot bath. What happens to things when you leave them in a bath for too long? They get soft, fall apart.”

• ” An army cannot sneak up on a man. But a lover can.”

• ” All that love, it doesn’t just disappear. It must be transformed into an emotion of equal intensity. That is the law of the universe.”

• ” All animals fight to live. Whether they want to or not.”

• “If a person’s heart can change due to persistently holding onto something, then why can’t that persistence grant me peace?”

• “The Golden Roc’s heart and its will are reflected as it flies through the world. Within its eyes, there is nothing in the world that can stop its path. It can fly endlessly in this vast sky”

The place where I was born still did things according to the laws of the universe…

• “When I was born, the Berserkers had weakened… If the heavens are heartless, then we will all be separated… The earth was heartless, and it made my Dark Mountain die… When war begins, the moon will shatter into millions of pieces… The roads leading to our homes will become unfamiliar to us, and we will grieve… ”

• “Always treat it as if he is still alive and kill him again, maybe twice, or even more.”

• ” But the techno-utopians do get tiresome with their platitudes and their ability to prattle on for hours without saying much of substance. More disconcerting is their underlying message that humans are flawed and our humanity is an annoying burden that needs to be dealt with in due course.”

• “I think there are probably too many smart people pursuing Internet stuff, finance, and law,” Musk said on the way. “That is part of the reason why we haven’t seen as much innovation.”

• “He does what he wants, and he is relentless about it. It’s Elon’s world, and the rest of us live in it.”

• “Maybe I read too many comics as a kid,” Musk said. “In the comics, it always seems like they are trying to save the world. It seemed like one should try to make the world a better place because the inverse makes no sense.”

• “The only reason he did not outrank the other boys was a lack of interest in the work prescribed by the school.”

• “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”

• “Sympathy the human species universally craves. The child eagerly displays his injury; or even inflicts a cut or bruise in order to reap abundant sympathy. For the same purpose adults … show their bruises, relate their accidents, illness, especially details of surgical operations. Self-pity’ for misfortunes real or imaginary is in some measure, practically a universal practice.”

• “The abbot of our monastery always said that fable has strong shoulders that carry far more truth than fact can.”

• “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

• “Here’s to the ones that we got Cheers to the wish you were here, but you’re not Cause the drinks bring back all the memories Of everything we’ve been through Toast to the ones here today Toast to the ones that we lost on the way Cause the drinks bring back all the memories And the memories bring back, memories bring back you ”

• “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.”

• “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”

• “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”

• “It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”

• “The privileged are processed by people, the poor are processed by algorithms.”

• “The only difference between a madman and me is that the madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.”

• “The gift is the blessing of the giver.”

• “There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

• “Humans live best when each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things. Destroy the place and destroy the person.”

• “The mind goes on working no matter how we try to hold it back”

• “It occurred to her that mercy was the ability to stop, if only for a moment. There was no mercy where there could be no stopping.”

• “Men and their works have been a disease on the surface of their planets before now,” his father said. “Nature tends to compensate for diseases, to remove or encapsulate them, to incorporate them into the system in her own way.”

• “The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.”

• “You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.”

• “The baby which cries the most gets the maximum milk.”

• “A boy at the beginning of a story has no way of knowing that the story has begun. ”

• “If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.”

• “Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.”

• “I think something’s wrong with me. I make friends, then suddenly I can’t bear to be with any of them. Seems like that other me, the cheerful and honest one, went away somewhere.”

• “Do any of us children, she wondered, ever stop to ask ourselves where our teachers go when school is over for the day? Do we wonder if they live alone, or if there is a mother at home or a sister or a husband?”

• “They have taken everything from us; should I let them take my mind as well?”

• “Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs. The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and to the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator’s voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making. Thus the pagan will be sanctified, the tragic become laughable; great lovers will stoop to sentiment, and demons dwindle to clockwork toys. Nothing is fixed. In and out the shuttle goes, fact and fiction, mind and matter, woven into patterns that may have only this in common: that hidden amongst them is a filigree which will with time become a world.

• “Self-perception is a zoo.”

• “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”

• “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

• “When something goes wrong with a computer you get an error message, When something goes wrong with a human you get feelings.”

• “For the others, we can say that Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

• “Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you can not see the mountain.”

• “There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in which you discover your father is a man—with human flesh.”

• “Black is a blind remembering, she thought. You listen for pack sounds, for the cries of those who hunted your ancestors in a past so ancient only your most primitive cells remember. The ears see. The nostrils see.”

• “What senses do we lack that we cannot see or hear another world all around us?”

• “Prophecy and prescience—How can they be put to the test in the face of the unanswered question? Consider: How much is actual prediction of the “wave form” (as MuadDib referred to his vision- image) and how much is the prophet shaping the future to fit the prophecy? What of the harmonics inherent in the act of prophecy? Does the prophet see the future or does he see a line of weakness, a fault or cleavage that he may shatter with words or decisions as a diamond-cutter shatters his gem with a blow of a knife?”

• “When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement become headlong—faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late.”

You are a placebo responder. Your body plays tricks on your mind. You cannot be trusted.’

• “How often it is that the angry man rages denial of what his inner self is telling him.”

• “A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.”

• “In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that it was cut down in its prime. Nobody counts the rings,notifies the loved ones. There are other trees.”

• “If you haven’t solved the puzzle, it isn’t the end yet.”

• “Recieve with simplicity everything that happens to you”

• “By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.”

• “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”

• “Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

• “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.”

• “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”

• “What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.”

• “We were kids without fathers … so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history. We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves.”

• “Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.”

• “Instead, chew on one thinker—writer, artist, activist, role model—you really love. Study everything there is to know about that thinker. Then find three people that thinker loved, and find out everything about them. Repeat this as many times as you can. Climb up the tree as far as you can go. Once you build your tree, it’s time to start your own branch.”

• “It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to.”

• “It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.”

• “Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.”

• “You start out by rewriting your hero’s catalog.” “If you have one person you’re influenced by, everyone will say you’re the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you’re so original!”

• “My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist.”

• “We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.”

• “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”

• “Avoiding work is the way to focus my mind.”

• “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.”

• “You don’t have to share everything—in fact, sometimes it’s much better if you don’t. Show just a little bit of what you’re working on. Share a sketch or a doodle or a snippet. Share a little glimpse of your process.”

• “I always carry a book, a pen, and a notepad, and I always enjoy my solitude and temporary captivity.”

• “There’s only one rule I know of: You’ve got to be kind.”

• “Find the most talented person in the room, and if it’s not you, go stand next to him. Hang out with him. Try to be helpful.”

• “Complain about the way other people make software by making software.”

• “The best way to get approval is to not need it.”

• “the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.”

• “In this age of information abundance and overload, those who get ahead will be the folks who figure out what to leave out, so they can concentrate on what’s really important to them. Nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. The idea that you can do anything is absolutely terrifying. The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself. It seems contradictory, but when it comes to creative work, limitations mean freedom. Write a song on your lunch break. Paint a painting with only one color. Start a business without any start-up capital.Shoot a movie with your iPhone and a few of your friends. Build a machine out of spare parts. Don’t make excuses for not working—make things with the time, space, and materials you have, right now.”

• “Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want—that just kills creativity.”

• “What we respond to in any work of art is the artist’s struggle against his or her limitations.”

• “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”

• “Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”

• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

• “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

• “Options—the ability to choose—is real power.”

• ” It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money—a lot more money—by doing half of what you are doing now.”

• “Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.”

• “In 21st century America, old-fashioned notions like honor and fair play are for suckers. The credo of our time is that as if it ain’t technically illegal, it’s awesome. The people who rise to the top are no longer those who accomplish truly great things, but those who figure out how to most attractively package their shortcuts and fake-outs.”

• “Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.”

• “If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.”

• “Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

• “No more passing days as the living dead, no more dinners where his colleagues compared cars, riding on the sugar high of a new BMW purchase until someone bought a more expensive Mercedes. It was over.”

• “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

• “There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything,” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway.” Either way, nothing happens.”

• “Don’t save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.”

• “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

• “Doing the unrealistic Is easier than doing the realistic”

• “The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.”

• “Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract “failure.”

• “The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.”

• “Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.”

• “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.”

• “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.”

• “In other words, I was working because I felt as though I should be doing something from 9-5.1 didn’t realize that working every hour from 9-5 isn’t the goal; it’s simply the structure most people use, whether it’s necessary or not.”

• “Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

• “Since we have 8 hours to fill, we fill 8 hours. If we had 15, we would fill

1. If we have an emergency and need to suddenly leave work in 2 hours but have pending deadlines, we miraculously complete those assignments in 2 hours.”

• “Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.”

• “Am I being productive or just active?”

• “Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”

• “We’re all pieces on someone’s board, Jorg.”

• “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

• “Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves – slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.”

• “Isn’t it strange that the only time we truly lived is when we were not even thinking about living truly?”

• ” A window to a new world can also show you home”

• “I think maybe we die every day. Maybe we’re born new each dawn, a little changed, a little further on our own road. When enough days stand between you and the person you were, you’re strangers. Maybe that’s what growing up is. Maybe I have grown up. ”

• “I’ve grown, but whatever monster might be in me, it was always mine, my choice, my responsibility, my evil, if you will. It’s what I am, and if you want excuses, come and take them.”

• ” When the economy is down, people go to school”

• “The Puppy Dog Close in sales is so named because it is based on the pet store sales approach: If someone likes a puppy but is hesitant to make the life-altering purchase, just offer to let them take the pup home and bring it back if they change their minds. Of course, the return seldom happens.”

• “It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them.”

• “People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.”

• “But the whole problem of discovering what was the matter, and figuring out what you have to do to fix it—that was interesting to me, like a puzzle.”

• “I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.”

• “If a typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we can probably automate it using AI either now or in the near future”

• “A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities”

• “The billionaires of tomorrow always seem to start out in garages, don’t they?”

• “Life is unfair. You make the best of what life deals you”

• ” Every path is the right path. Everything could’ve been anything else. And it would have just as much meaning.”

• “Choices … We cannot go back. That’s why it’s hard to choose. You have to make the right choice. As long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible.”

• “In chess, it’s called Zugzwang…when the only viable move…is not to move.”

• “The child could not make a choice because he did not know what would happen, but now that he knows what will happen, he can not make a choice.”

• “I’m not afraid to die, I’m afraid I haven’t lived enough. It should be written on every school chalkboard, “Life is a playground- or nothing.”

• “Why am I me and not somebody else?”

• “But the logic of his immediate circumstances was overwhelming his other concerns, however well founded they might be. He had never been one to argue with logic.”

• “There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.”

• “Saving one dog will not change the world, but surely for that one dog, the world will change forever.”

• “He wasn’t in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad, bitter things happened for no reason, and people paid for things that weren’t their fault.”

• “For the true magician there is no very clear line between what lies inside the mind and what lies outside it. If you desire something, it will become substance. If you despise it, you will see it destroyed. A master magician is not much different from a child or a madman in that respect. It takes a very clear head and a very strong will to operate once you are in that place. And you will find out very quickly whether or not you have that clarity and that strength.”

• “Everybody has their own idiopathic reaction to their childhood home.”

• “So you have to promise me, Quentin. Let’s never get like this, with these stupid hobbies nobody cares about. Just doing pointless things all day and hating each other and waiting to die. Well, you drive a hard bargain,” he said.

• “But okay. I promise. I’m serious, Quentin. It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be so much harder than you think. They don’t even know, Quentin. They think they’re happy. That’s the worst part.”

• “Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic,” Fogg said expansively. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little too perfect, don’t you think? If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes. I sometimes feel as though we’ve stumbled on a flaw in the system, don’t you? A short circuit? A category error? A strange loop? Is it possible that magic is knowledge that would be better off forsworn? Tell me this: Can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?”

• “I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”

• “How can you seek eternal life by means of a temporal body?”

• “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

• “The goal is not for everyone to be equal. The goal is for everyone to be connected. The goal is for everyone to belong. The goal is for everyone to be loved.”

• “How can the events in space and time, which take place within the boundaries of a living organism, be accounted for by physics and chemistry? … The obvious inability of present-day physics and chemistry to account for such events is no reason at all for doubting that they will be accounted for by those sciences.”

• “human was the music, natural was the static…”

• “We worship perfection because we can’t have it; if we had it, we would reject it. Perfection is inhuman, because humanity is imperfect.”

• “life so perfect, it flatlines”

• “Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be. And this rips us apart inside.”

• “Because when you give too many fucks—when you give a fuck about everyone and everything—you will feel that you’re perpetually entoc: true titled to be comfortable and happy at all times, that everything is supposed to be just exactly the fucking way you want it to be. This is a sickness. And it will eat you alive. You will see every adversity as an injustice, every challenge as a failure, every inconvenience as a personal slight, every disagreement as a betrayal. You will be confined to your own petty, skull-sized hell, burning with entoc: true titlement and bluster, running circles around your very own personal Feedback Loop from Hell, in constant motion yet arriving nowhere.”

• “Don’t hope for a life without problems,” the panda said. “There’s no such thing. Instead, hope for a life full of good problem”

• “Emotions are merely signposts, suggestions that our neurobiology gives us, not commandments.”

• “The deeper the pain, the more helpless we feel against our problems, and the more entoc: true titlement we adopt to compensate for those problems.”

• “If one isn’t crazy, why would they try to understand something like the laws of the heavens? If one isn’t crazy, why would they try to become an immortal? One must want something in order to obtain it. That is the truth”

• “All of the glorious moments of the past had become distant memories…The one that falls in the fire must be that immortal phoenix… Even if it must burn its wings, it will still fly in the heavens…Closing one door is like loving a world.Memories of the past will now be forever distant.The sand in the wind no longer filled the space of dreams. The whimper of the powerful flute is now only an echo in the desolate land.Closing off one door is like cutting off one space and time.The glorious past only remains in the descent’s songs.Yesterday’s song no longer resonate the same way. The whispering complaints can’t find its matching music.Opening a window is like hugging a ray of sunlight.Today’s dream became the future empire’s hope.Even the ordinary you and me need to have exciting displays. Pursuit without regret to feel the might of the world.Opening a window is like welcoming a wave of spring wind.The burst of nothingness awaken what was once lost.The one that fell in the fire must be that immortal phoenix… Even if it must burn its wings it will still fly in the heavens.”

• “The rainy night is beautiful in its mood and endlessness. The plants silently absorb the water and the scent of death on them quietly disappears. This is the beauty of the rain and the taste of life.”

• “What is death… death is to die. If a person dies, then it is death, and if the heart dies, then it forgets… that is death.”

• “The water falling in this puddle today is life. Tomorrow, when there is no water falling, then this puddle is death. Dead water is water without life and flow.”Then his right hand casually pointed again and this time it was on the men next to the fire. The void in his eyes became even stronger and he said,

• “Today they can enjoy, be angry, be sad, or be happy. That is life. In the future, they won’t be able to enjoy, be angry be sad, or be happy, and that is death.”His hand suddenly moved and pointed at a praying mat. He said, “This shrine was alive when the statue of the god was here. Now that it is without it, it is dead!”Speaking of this, he stood up, pointed at the sky, and said,

• “These raindrops are born in the sky and die on the earth. What’s in the middle is their life. I look at this rain not for the sky, earth, or the rain itself, but the raindrop’s entire life… this cycle of life and death.”

• “Life and death are separated by a thin line. Some are clearly dead, but they are now living in someone else’s heart. Some are clearly alive, but they start dying if they don’t change.”

• “She felt Wang Lin’s lips and his warmth. This warmth contained an unerasable joy, a silent call, and a sense of protection that will never fade.Love is like a river; the left shore is the joyous laughter that can brighten up 1000 years of sadness and the right shore is an eternal silence lingering under the candlelight. What flows between them is years of fading loneliness.”

• “Humans often choose to dedicate large portions of their lives to seemingly useless or destructive causes. On the surface, these causes make no sense.”

• “We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves against others; rather, the question is by what standard do we measure ourselves?”

Quotes temp

• “As long as one’s heart is determined, then one can cultivate any of the millions of daos that exist!”

• “Things of this world can’t escape karma. The karmatic cause of yesterday will be the karmatic effect of today. Only by settling one’s karma and letting dirt return to dirt, letting dust return to dust, can a cycle be complete.”

• “Sometimes one or two leaves would fall and drift before his eyes.Falling leaves will all eventually return to the roots of the tree. They were like children who would leave when tired but would always return to their love ones.”

• “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

• “There are no monsters in the sea. Only the ones we make up in our heads”

• “The heavens’ dao is endless, the path of dao is boundless. The kind act of today will create karmic cause… In the future, the cycle will be completed and karmic effect will form… Dao is like this bowl, not perfect and filled with cracks. It can be broken at any time… The dao of the heavens is something everyone can prove and everyone can confirm. The heavens is not dao. Dao is formed by the will of the heavens and earth. Everyone can have this will!”Just like the fish that lives in the river. It doesn’t violate the heavens or provoke yin and yang, it lives peacefully and free! This river is the heavens, the world. The fish is all living things that exist inside the world!”However, the net pulls the fish out from the river. This net is dao, the laws of the world! No matter where you are, you won’t be able to escape dao!”This net will one day pull the fish out from the river. Once out of the river, the fish will face the laws of the world. Either it obeys and enters the reincarnation cycle or it must revolt! Break the net and revolt!”Cultivators are like the struggling fish. The more they fiercely the struggle, the more they defy dao!”This is dao! Whether it is life and death or karma, all of it is formed by the will of dao! I’m karma”

• “Apricot tree blooms white flowers…”Cultivation, cultivation, mortals yearn to become immortal and enter the cultivation world. Yet they don’t know how many cultivators are envious of a mortal’s bland life.”How many more died in foreign places like Sun Tai, their ashes scattering with the wind, unable to return home… However, many parents and relatives weren’t able to meet their children even at their dying moment. If one had the chose again, would they still take that step to become a cultivator…”

• “The flame moved with the wind just like how the wind makes the plants move, which makes it look like the mountain is moving, but in reality…” Wang Lin pondered.”In reality, the mountain didn’t move, the flame didn’t move, what moved was the wind!”

• “Dao is like a thought, and everyone’s thoughts are different. If one wants to enrich one’s own mind, they must learn other people’s thoughts as well.”

• “Where is there no heaven?”Wang Lin didn’t speak but raised his right hand and waved. A breeze blew through the courtyard and a circle appeared on the ground around Li Qianmei and Lu Yuncong. It was as if someone had drawn a circle around them with a stick.”This is the circle is the heaven both of you think exist. Because you believe that there is a heaven, the heavens exist. You regard yourselves as ants that struggle to break out from the heavens, which is your cage. This is your belief and your faith. However, even if you walk out from the circle, what’s the use?”Wang Lin shook his head and waved his right hand, then another circle formed around the circle from before.”Once you come out, there will still be another heaven, and the cycle of karma continues without end until… The heaven in your heart is erased by the heavens, and this is the lie of the heavens! I was thinking about this hundreds of years ago. So why must there be a heaven?”

• “A old friend once told me that the rain is born from the heavens and dies on the earth. The middle is life… But does the rain really come from the heavens…. Rain comes from the void and has nothing to do with the heavens. The rain falls on the earth and nourishes all life, but it has nothing to do with the earth. It is just the fate of rain!”The rain forms from water vapor, and water vapor comes from all living things. The rain naturally needs to return to them. This is a cycle, a cycle of karma, and it can also be considered fate.”There is the law of fate. It is invisible, but it surrounds all life and quietly changes everything…” Wang Lin looked at the sky and randomly waved his hand. A thunderous rumble came from the sky and then water vapor gather from all sides. Dark clouds appeared, and a moment later, rain fell from the sky.”Look at the life of a raindrop. Is there any raindrop that falls in a straight line… I observed rain for a long time like I was viewing life, but I didn’t see any drop of rain fall straight without changing its trajectory. They… always change due to the wind or the clouds or their own weight, adjusting the place they will land. Do you see the unwillingness from the rain?”Do you know why it is like this?” Wang Lin withdrew his gaze and looked at Li Qianmei.Li Qianmei looked at the rain, and after a long time, she softly said, “Where the will of the heavens exists, fate will change.”The life of a raindrop is very short, but due to cycle, it is very long… Cultivators like us have very long lives, but due to the will of the heavens, it is also very short.”However, in just in the short life of a drop of rain, it struggles countless times to escape the control of fate. In order to fight fate, it keeps changing where it will land!”And the long lives of cultivators like us are not something the rain can’t compare to, but how many are willing to desperately struggle to the death to escape the clutches of fate like the rain? To struggle until death to resist the arrangement of the heavens. To struggle until death to defy the will of the heavens!”Wang Lin waved his sleeves and the sky rumbled and the rain was pushed back into the clouds. The dark clouds collapsed and the rain turned into water vapor that dissipated into the world.”You changing the fate of the raindrop makes you the will of the heavens. The moth will be burned by the fire. If you blow out the fire, making it so the moth can’t die in the fire, then you have changed the fate of the moth. If fate wants someone to die but you save them, then you are the will of the heavens! There is a saying from ancient times: Are those who call themselves kings and lords more noble than us?’ This saying embodies this truth!”The celestials also had a saying: Once a man achieves dao, his chicken and dogs will rise to heaven.’”

.”Dao isn’t the net or the mountain, but a thought! This thought varies from person to person. Some people regard it as a net, while others regard it as a mountain…” When Wang Lin heard Li Qianmei’s words, he began to ponder, and his eyes gradually grew brighter.”Dao is a thought? A person is a person because they have thoughts, so they can separate from their body, merge with the world, and ponder about the unknown…”

• “life springs from the dirt of the earth, and water too clean often harbors no fish.’

.”Seeking dao… In truth, it is bringing the dao into your heart, this is dao-seeking. The so-called comprehension and domain are the same. You keep a comprehension in your heart and slowly experience it until it merges with your dao. Eventually, it will become a domain, an ideal.”

• “When we’re passionate about something, we want other people to also be passionate about it. It validates ourselves. We don’t care if our passion is good for other people. We just want them to confirm that our passion is the best thing in the world.”

• “The body’s desire for homeostasis can be harnessed to drive changes: push it hard enough and for long enough, and it will respond by changing in ways that make that push easier to do.”

• “YOU GONNA BOO HOO OR YOU GONNA YEE HAW?!”

• “I can take a spoon and swing that at a tree and call that sucker an axe”

• “I tend to think too much, Bast. My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right. Even if there was no good explanation for what I did.” He smiled wistfully. “Even if there were very good reasons for me not to do what I did.”

• “How odd to watch a mortal kindle Then to dwindle day by day. Knowing their bright souls are tinder And the wind will have its way. Would I could my own fire lend. What does your flickering portend?”

• “Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”

• “Just pity him, my boy. Tomorrow we’ll be on our way, but he’ll have to keep his own disagreeable company until the day he dies.”

• “A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”

• “Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.”

• “Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough.”

• “Besides, anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to wondrous things.”

• “Anyone who thinks boys are innocent and sweet has never been a boy himself, or has forgotten it. And anyone who thinks men aren’t hurtful and cruel at times must not leave his house often. And he has certainly never been a physicker.”

• “That’s why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”

• “Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer.”

• “And while my suite of rooms at the Horse and Four had been luxurious, my tiny room at Anker’s was comfortable. Think in terms of shoes. You don’t want the biggest you can find. You want the pair that fits. In time, that tiny room at Anker’s came to be more of a home to me than anywhere else in the world.”

• “If you are searching for a pattern in anything, you will most likely find it”

• “It had been treated unkindly in the past, but that didn’t make it less lovely underneath. So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”

• “You know you’re clever. That’s your weakness. You assume you know what you’re getting into, but you don’t.”

• “My point is this. In each of us there is a mind we use for all our waking deeds. But there is another mind as well, a sleeping mind. It is so powerful that the sleeping mind of an eight-year-old can accomplish in one second what the waking minds of seven members of the Arcanum could not in fifteen minutes.”

He made a sweeping gesture. “Your sleeping mind is wide and wild enough to hold the names of things. This I know because sometimes this knowledge bubbles to the surface. Inyssa has spoken the name of iron. Her waking mind does not know it, but her sleeping mind is wiser. Something deep inside Fela understands the name of the stone.”

Elodin pointed at me. “Kvothe has called the wind. If we are to believe the writings of those long dead, his is the traditional path. The wind was the name aspiring namers sought and caught when things were studied here so long ago.”

• “What use is care? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things. They should be seeing. I see the things I look at. I am a see-er.”

• “The struggle is great, the task divine—to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.”

• “This is, in fact, the first obligation of a leader and a decision maker. Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sense of the bigger picture, who will? If the leader isn’t thinking through all the way to the end, who is?”

• “We do not live in this moment. We, in fact, try desperately to get out of it—by thinking, doing, talking, worrying, remembering, hoping, whatever. We pay thousands of dollars to have a device in our pocket to ensure that we are never bored. We sign up for endless activities and obligations, chase money and accomplishments, all with the naïve belief that at the end of it will be happiness.”

• “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”

• “Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water.”

• “With my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden”

• “What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out.”

• “Most of us would be seized with fear if our bodies went numb, and would do everything possible to avoid it, yet we take no interest at all in the numbing of our souls.”

• “In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.”

• “The more important a call or action is to our souls evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

• “Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren’t sick, they’re self-dramatizing.”

• “In the past, the focus of the process of invention has tended to be on actually getting something to work (“find the lightbulb filament that works,” et cetera). But in the computational universe, the focus shifts to the question of what you want the invention to do. Because once you’ve described the goal, finding a way to achieve it is something that can be automated.”

• “the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.”

• “The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”

• “My friend Tony K e p p e l m a n’s n a p p e d me out of it by asking if I was gonna quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy. You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That ”s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful.”

• “He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that.”

• “The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field. The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. but she does not forget that the work is not her. her artistic self contains many works and many performances. already the next is percolating inside her. the next will be better, and the one after that better still. the professional self-validates. she is tough-minded. in the face of indifference or adulation, she assesses her stuff coldly and objectively. where it fell short, she’ll improve it. where it triumphed, she’ll make it better still. she’ll work harder. she’ll be back tomorrow.”

• “The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page.”

• “I’m not sure if the most spoken words in the average american household are ‘I love you’ or ‘I want that’”

• “Eternity is in love with the creations of time.”

• “When we make a beginning, we get out of our own way”

• “The act of creation is by definition territorial. As the mother-to-be bears her child within her, so the artist or innovator contains her new life. No one can help her give it birth. But neither does she need any help.”

• “Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

• “The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run”

• “It is strange to be known so universally and yet be so lonely.”

• “When the void is filled, you no longer need distractions to help you avoid it.”

• “Document vs create”

• “Shit is subjective my man. People arent starting. They are pondering, debating.”

• “Do you know yourself? Or do you aspire to be something youre not”

• “You cant create today, distribute, facilitate”

• “Civilizations advance by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking”

• “Realists are often just dreamers who got their hearts broken along the way”

• “Perfectionism is the enemy of action”

• “You are not invisible if you can see yourself”

• “Love and rationality weren’t compatible.”

• “If you want to accomplish something great, your heart needs to be in the right place. You don’t possess such a vision, yet you think you are worthy to claim that you will bring the human race to prominence?”

• “If you chased after the dream of humankind’s rise to prominence, constantly pursuing the most profound secrets of this world, but you discovered that what really hindered you was the human race itself, how would you feel?”

• “Before you achieved any success, the entire world would laugh at you, scorn you, and look down on you. When you achieved success… the whole world would become your enemy!”

• “Real experts don’t fear anything. They act prudently and cautiously at every step.”

• “After all, if you give out some things for free, people won’t value them anymore, and they might even make additional demands before they take you seriously. Also, the price that I’m asking for it is really low; it’s already quite generous!”

• “If I am doing something for the greater good, then I will focus all my attention on it. If I am doing something selfish, then I will choose the path that will bring me the most benefit.”

• “I don’t care about what others think. To me, public and personal matters don’t necessarily need to conflict. I can harbor great ambition for the human race, but I also need to know when to do things for myself!”

• “If you can make a vow for a girl today, you can break that vow for a girl another day”

• “If a person doesn’t have dreams, what’s the difference between them and a salted fish?”

• “Until you’re ready to look foolish, you’ll never have the possibility of being great.”

• “Fantasy and reality are polar existences of each other, and yet dependent on the other. Without fantasy, there is no point in reality. Without reality, fantasy has no meaning. Reality is fantasy, fantasy is reality, this is already the 99th world that I’ve come to…”

• “Samsara is not a simple return to the origin. It is Nirvana and it is rebirth.”

• “Betrayal is the only truth. Human nature is that of greed to begin with; no one can ever be content. ”

• “Little Friend Lin, you have an excellent future and time ahead of you; it really arouses envy in others. Cherish it well. Life is short and no matter how beautiful the springtime of your youth is, white hair will await you in the end. If you waste your years then it will become far more difficult to advance when you reach old age!”

• “The road of martial arts is to defy the will of the heavens to begin with! You blame the heavens for being unfair, then you might as well blame the world for not being flat. ”

• “In chaos, there was neither space nor time, there was nothing to hear or anything to feel, so how could anything be called large or small?”

• “Dont worry about being interesting, be worried about being interested”

• “Even the Heavenly Dao has its own samsara. Moreover, even if we may live for a hundred million years, in my opinion, that is nothing more than a great and wonderful dream. The passing clouds, the awakening dreams, everything is nothing but fleeting ripples in water.”

• “If I can preach to the infallible, then after I perish within my fires, let my tongue remain forever.”

• “There are no eternal enemies nor are there eternal friends. There are only eternal interests.”

• “Climbing the road of martial arts is originally trying to shake the leaves from a tree with a simple gust of wind… at the least… you have the courage to try…”

• “A person always needed a group to recognize them. When everything was destroyed, when his family and friends were all gone, leaving him all alone, then even if he could grasp the heavens and earth in his palm in millions of years, even if he could rule over the universe by himself, what meaning was there in that?”

• “Then, the golden pages left behind amongst the spiritas spoke about returning to one’s true origins. I am the universe. I am the myriad of existence!”

• “Your sense of purpose is too strong. Things that are valuable to you, you will pursue. But things that are worthless, you will give up. For instance, this lake. If you had passed by this lake I’m afraid you wouldn’t even have spared it a single glance…Your life could be called breaking through all obstacles in your way, moving forwards with unstoppable momentum. You desperately rush towards the peak of martial arts and you far surpass all others of your generation. From the time you bloomed, you took few detours. But to gain this you also lost something. The road of martial arts is more than the most mysterious and the greatest of the Heavenly Dao Laws. There are also ordinary, everyday experiences. You are missing a section of your path… Your road might be called too smooth. In the past you might have experienced some setbacks, but those are far from enough. You are invincible amongst your peers. In battle you sing nothing but victory and have defeated countless rivals. It could even be said that you have never experienced true defeat. But, that might become your limitation, making it impossibly difficult for you to step onto the peak of martial arts! For one whose road of martial arts is too smooth, for one who isn’t forced to take detours, for one who sings nothing but hymns of victory, it is instead easy to fall into a bottleneck, making one forever unable to step onto the peak of martial arts.”

• “The path of the martial artist is like a flame. Practicing the martial arts will only cause pain. The dangers are countless and the road is filled with obstacles. Everyone who walks down it will eventually turn to ash, but the true martial artist will be reborn from these ashes. Even if I am only a small and weak moth, I will walk into the flames without hesitation. I will fight my destiny for a one in a million chance that I will experience my own samsara and be reborn as a flaming phoenix. And even now, I am no longer a moth…”

• “A worm that lives amongst the dead leaves and fallen branches will never understand the beauty and greatness of this world! And a worm was a creature that wouldn’t live past the winter. Because of its short life, it didn’t know the dangers of a world filled with ice and snow. But what about martial artists? Wasn’t it the same? 10 billion years ago, those supreme elders might have seemed heaven-shaking and world-breaking, but were they able to see the world 10 billion years later? The current Good Fortune Saint Sovereign was also all-powerful, but would he be able to see the future of 10 billion years from now?”

• “I must struggle in the dust and chaos. Even if I am only a small wave, I will still bravely move forwards…”

• “They gently supported each other. Even though there was no real physical touch, in this moment their hearts were still connected. This was because… within each other’s hearts and minds they had forever marked each other, a brand that would never be forgotten.”

• “Life, really is small…”

If the heavens wish to destroy me then I will destroy the heavens. If the death god wants to take me then I will cut down the death god!’

• “The charm of wine comes from the mood of drinking wine. Those that understand wine taste not just the wine but also the mood. From the spiciness when it first enters the throat, to the fresh heat once it is swallowed, to the lasting fragrance that one can mull over. It’s just like life. In the world, countless people struggle. They experience hardship, they experience tribulations, and if they can survive all of that then they can return to their true state and release the mellow fragrance of life.”

• “Even if I have to climb without end in my life, even if I forever remain small and never see where the highest peak is, then at the very least… I will keep surpassing myself, I will keep defeating myself.”

• “During those days, although I experienced innumerable tribulations, these tribulations slowly grinded away my edges and corners, causing my character to change and become completely different from what I used to be… I began to learn how to restrain myself, learn how to think deeply of my actions and their consequences, learn to accept reality for what it was, learn to be grateful…”

• “Man was always unwilling to die. But man would die no matter what. As a person approached the precipice of death, they would hope that they could leave behind something. So that when they closed their eyes one last time, they could tell themselves that their bloodline continued flowing on in the world… This intense desire, if traded for another name, could be called fatherly love’ and motherly love’. The love of parents. In essence, that was one’s hope that one’s life would continue to exist onwards. This was a selfish love, but also a selfless love. A parent’s love never asked to be repaid, because to them, their children living well was the greatest repayment they could ever receive.”

• “In truth, you saying anything to me is meaningless… the future is not something given to you, but something that you struggle for yourself. Behind the backs of enemies you defeat lies your own road of growth. The peak of martial arts has never been something that you can reach by piling up resources or accumulating your background. Rather, it is something you slaughter towards even as you slowly explore your way towards it. When the vast cosmos of the 33 Heavens surges with chaos, that is a time when heroes pour forth from the ranks of creation. A calamity to end the world may be a graveyard for the weak, but it will also set the stage for the strong…”

• “Pain comes from the body, but it actually reflects in the soul and mind… if I can control my soul, then no matter how painful it is it cannot be this fierce…”

• “Currently, what Sheng Mei pursued was no longer eternal life, but instead what could truly touch her heart and move her soul. To cultivate to fulfill one’s own heart, perhaps this was truly touching upon the peak of martial arts. But in reflection, what was one’s heart? Perhaps that was to allow oneself, one’s lovers, one’s spouses, one’s children, one’s family, one’s friends, one’s people, to allow everyone to live in peace and happiness….”

• “Life, is innocent. Even amongst the saints, there are naïve little children, there are kind-hearted subjects. This war was never their intention.”

• “I am not sure whether we can win or not. The future is not set in stone. We martial artists cultivate the body, cultivate the Heavenly Dao, cultivate the divine soul, but in the end, just what are we cultivating for? What are we chasing after? Even I have been left confused by this. For glory? That is only fleeting smoke before the eyes. For strength? I already possess the power to sunder the heavens and shatter the earth, to annihilate stars and the vastness of space. To become immortal? In these years I have also chased after immortality. However, when I was in the Emperor Bone Sea I looked upon the countless pained remnant souls there as well as the 100 billion year plot that the Soul Emperor had laid out for the sake of immortality, and suddenly, at that time I felt that chasing after eternal life was meaningless. For we that practice martial arts, we naturally must fight. But in fact, what we are fighting is the chaos of the world, the time when the catastrophe arrives. The extinction of races, lives lost like burning coals, the collapse and destruction of great worlds, this time, the fight has reached the peak. Then, perhaps the peak of martial arts is originally for the common people of the world…”

• “Let the enemy sink into the bottomless sea of fighting against commoners.”

• “After all, humankind wasn’t driven by words and whips, but by their own benefits. Putting it another way, as long as he could continuously fulfill the basic interests of the people under his rule, there would be no one who could shake his dominance.”

• “Rather than say ‘charge for me’, say ‘charge with me’.” Iron Axe smiled.

• “The stronger you are, the more challenges you’ll meet and the more setbacks you’ll encounter. But don’t forget, no matter how much hardship you experience, you’re already enviable.”

• “I’ve been told that geniuses will always die doing what they are best at, and God would make up for it by giving such people an unmatchable talent—This is fate. A road that’s destined to be good will cause the one who walks on it to succumb to temptation because of one’s extraordinary talent and eventually fall from grace. On the contrary, those ordinary people without much talent will tend to live longer.”

• “People needed to break through the impossible because no one knew whether there would be a miracle unless they tried.”

• “They said they wanted to defend Neverwinter and everything in their native town that they earned through their hard work.” The old man sipped the tea and continued, “To be completely honest, I didn’t understand at first and asked them why it had to be them instead of others. Lightning was asking the same question within herself. Broocher seemed to know what she was thinking. He answered, “They said that others had made their sacrifices. Many people were killed during the battle against the demonic beasts when they were just members of the Militia. People died all the time when they fought against Duke Ryan and the church. If everybody relied on others, we would have been still working at the mine, living like animals,” the old man said. “There’s no battle without blood spilled. Everybody has his own turn. If nobody wanted to come forward, we would have been at the mercy of our enemy — that was what they told me.”

• “The history of the human civilization was, essentially, a process where men continuously developed different methods to boil water.”

• “Empathy is the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart and vocalize it” “There are three kinds of yes - counterfeit, confirmation and commitment”

• “All living things are mundane, and yet, all living things can also be extraordinary! Cultivators practice cultivation because of their desire to shed the limitations of the mortal world. They wish to be like the carp that leapt over the dragon gate…. Plants and vegetation are similar. When concocting them into medicinal pills and consuming them, one should not solely focus on strengthening themselves, but should also strive to sense the plant’s fundamental will. It might seem like the plant dies in the process of becoming a pill, but who can truly say whether or not this is just a rebirth into another stage of life for them?”

• “When your Dao is the heart, then if you have something in your heart, it exists. If you don’t have it in your heart, it doesn’t exist.”

• “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime so that he many never discover how much he loves steak”

• “It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”

• “You think Resistance isn’t real? Resistance will bury you.”

• “The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.”

• “The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.”

• “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”

• “So if you’re paralyzed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.”

• “Remember, the part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.”

• “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

• “Show me a writer who’s too good to take Job X or Assignment Y and I’ll show you a guy I can crack like a walnut.”

• “He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.”

• “Clear your mind young padawan, There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force”.

• “There you are; human nature in action, wrongdoers, blaming everybody but themselves. We are all like that.”

• “When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”

• “God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days. Why should you and I?”

• “If there is any one secret of success,” said Henry Ford, “it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.”

• “The universe is largely left up to chance, and the control you think you have… much of it is a delusion.”

• “The world has never complained about how busy it is. ”

• “Those who work in a playful, relaxed manner tend to work efficiently and creatively. Those who work nonstop, driven only by stress, work without joy.”

• “A good family trip can prevent divorce. What makes music beautiful is the distance between one note and another. What makes speech eloquent is the appropriate pause between words. From time to time we should take a breath and notice the silence between sounds.”

• “The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your

• “likes” is the new smoking.”

• “Some may not believe it,but I spent hours perfecting whatever I did.”

• “People have to grow through skillful frustrations, otherwise they have no incentive to develop their own means and ways of coping with the world.”

• “Had not this water just now illustrated to me the principle of gung fu? I struck it but it did not suffer hurt. Again, I struck it with all my might—yet it was not wounded! I then tried to grasp a handful of it but this proved impossible. This water, the softest substance in the world, which could be contained in the smallest jar, only seemed weak. In reality, it could penetrate the hardest substances in the world. That was it! I wanted to be like the nature of water.”

• “Well, the water was not to be deterred. It was going to find a path, or even multiple paths. It would move along until it met with an obstacle, and then, if it needed to, it would change course and keep on flowing. It used “no way” as its way. In other words, it used every possible way. And it ran along without limitation.”

• “Perfection as we typically think about it should be treated more as a way to focus our attention rather than a final accomplishment that we attain”

• “Like flowing water, life is perpetual movement”

• “Water doesn’t have this problem. A wave doesn’t have to remember how to land on the shore. A river doesn’t have to consider how to carve a canyon into a mountain. A lake doesn’t have to practice giving life to the fish and the plants. In its simple way of just being, water can be our guide along our path to our natural selves. And one day, if we self-actualize, we can attain (and reclaim) this”

• “The world is always fair to those who win”

• “Work hard, try your best and enjoy the good fortune if it comes your way. But dont depend on it. And dont think if it doesnt, you are somehow less worthy or to blame ”

• “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

• “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

• “None of us are immune from life’s tragic moments. Like the small rubber boat we had in basic SEAL training, it takes a team of good people to get you to your destination in life. You cannot paddle the boat”

• “Because, Mr. Mac, life isn’t fair and the sooner you learn that the better off you will be”

• “It is easy to blame your lot in life on some outside force, to stop trying because you believe fate is against you. It is easy to think that where you were raised, how your parents treated you, or what school you went to is all that determines your future. Nothing could be further from the truth. The common people and the great men and women are all defined by how they deal with life’s unfairness: Helen Keller, Nelson Mandela, Stephen Hawking, Malala Yousafzai, and—Moki Martin. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how good you are”

• “Life is a struggle and the potential for failure is ever present, but those who live in fear of failure, or hardship, or embarrassment will never achieve their potential. Without pushing your limits, without occasionally sliding down the rope headfirst, without daring greatly, you will never know what is truly possible in your life.”

• “At some point we will all confront a dark moment in life. If not the passing of a loved one, then something else that crushes your spirit and leaves you wondering about your future. In that dark moment, reach deep inside yourself and be your very best.”

• “Hope is the most powerful force in the universe. With hope you can inspire nations to greatness. With hope you can raise up the downtrodden. With hope you can ease the pain of unbearable loss. Sometimes all it takes is one person to make a difference. We will all find ourselves neck deep in mud someday. That is the time to sing loudly, to smile broadly, to lift up those around you and give them hope that tomorrow will be a better day.”

• “Life is full of difficult times. But someone out there always has it worse than you do. If you fill your days with pity, sorrowful for the way you have been treated, bemoaning your lot in life, blaming your circumstances on someone or something else, then life will be long and hard. If, on the other hand, you refuse to give up on your dreams, stand tall and strong against the odds—then life will be what you make of it— and you can make it great. Never, ever, ring the bell!”

• “Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden, and never, ever give up… if you do these things, then the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today. And what started here will indeed have changed the world,”

• “The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”

• “Because here’s another sneaky little truth about life. You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can’t. Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.”

• “I once heard an artist say that when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some. I think what most people—especially educated, pampered middle-class white people—consider “life problems” are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about. It then follows that finding something important and meaningful in your life is perhaps the most productive use of your time and energy. Because if you don’t find that meaningful something, your fucks will be given to meaningless and frivolous”

• “A cheerful poverty, he says, is an honourable state. But if it is cheerful it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little who is poor, but the one who hankers after more. What difference does it make how much there is laid away in a mans safe or in his barns, how many head of stock he grazes or how much capital he puts out at interest, if he is always after what is anothers and only counts what he has yet to get, never what he has already. You ask what is the proper limit to a persons wealth? First, having what is essential, and second, having what is enough.”

• “This prompts me to memorize something which I came across in Pomponius. Some men have shrunk so far into dark corners that objects in bright daylight seem quite blurred to them. A balanced combination of the two attitudes is what we want; the active man should be able to take things easily, while the man who is inclined towards repose should be capable of action. Ask nature: she will tell you that she made both day and night ”

• “To me, says Democritus, a single man is a crowd, and a crowd is a single man. Equally good is the answer given by the person, whoever it was (his identity is uncertain), who when asked what was the object of all the ”

• “Conquer the world or die”

• “Pain is but a passing thought”

• “In front of my brothers, my heart still remains unchanged. I’m still the original me, no matter what happens.”

• “If you ever meet a girl who can move your heart, do not miss the chance, you must take the initiative.”

• “The past is now past, and the future is too far away. Only the present matters.”

• “Each predicament appears incomparably complex but yet, doesnt simplicity lies on the other side of complexity?”

• “Now the internet is not so good, because smart people go to the internet. You should go to the off ground”

• “Money follows people. People follow dreams”

• “The sad truth is that the truth is sad.”

• “The key to life is to be unborable”

• “Ideas are like knowing you should do push ups”

• “People run themselves into the ground when they start wavering from what they are… When you do the things you don’t want to do because you simply graduated to the next spot… you LOSE!”

• “Inspiration exists but it has to find you working”

• “When someone dies they are regarded with more respect and social standing because they are no longer competing with us”

• “You cant read about doing pushups”

• “If you are good at what you do, its not about time.”

• “Think globally, act locally”

• “Its only ever the moment that is guiding you.”

• “Always know your action. So if you come in the morning confident or on your ass, you know what to do.”

• “Listening is good. obeying is not always the best.”

• “Where does language end and vision begin”

• “Deep learning is like the geometric mean of biology and physics.” (TL: Bruh.)

• “What is overfitting? When your model is somehow very sensitive to the small random unimportant stuff in your dataset. Think of it like the dataset and the model having Degrees of Freedom. If both are similar, then the model will not be able to ignore even minor changes in the data. But if the model is much larger than the data itself then it would be able to ignore the tiny randomness”

• “Saying you don’t need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”

• “Weak existences would feel tiny when they faced the vast world and the passage of time, which was infinite. But there would always be people who did not wish to remain tiny. They would search. What would the future be like 10,000 years from now? What about a 100,000 years? 10,000,000 years? Did this world have an end to it? What was at the end of the continent? Was there another piece of land across the ocean? Was there a sky above the skies? These people would want to slowly control their own destiny. By conquering nature in the pursuit of balance, they would exist on the same level as the world!”

• “This made Yi Yun even more diligent. Life could not repeat itself like the rising and setting of the sun. If one did not grab every moment, one would waste their talent and potential. It would be a great regret.”

• “It was like in his previous life. The richest people in the poor mountainous regions, where vehicles could not even pass through, would probably not amount to a hundredth of the wealth of a commoner in Shanghai.”

• “Everyone had to pay the price of their choices.”

• “Lightning was a destructive power, but it was a power that created as well. It was rumored that life was first born when lightning struck the ocean in the past.”

• “In fact, human nature was arguably evil. Some people were inclined to kill people of their own species. After gaining pleasure from doing so, they would then plunder the riches of others for themselves. Some people killed thousands to make ghost summoning banners, seizing young ladies as cultivating slaves, and even doing despicable acts towards young girls… Many a time, when these people released their deviant inhibitions, they would resort to anything while acting fanatically. However…due to the prohibitions of morality, and the laws and rules established by large factions in this world, many people could only strongly suppress the evil in their hearts. But this suppression would be lifted without any worries when it was another species in question. As they were not of the same species, they could vent the evil in their hearts. They would not be considered cruel and bloodthirsty while engaging in those atrocities. On the contrary, they could be proud of it. For example, they would not be criticized if they infiltrated the Desolate race’s grounds, plundering large numbers of Desolate race young ladies as cultivation slaves. From a certain point of view, the conflict between the Human and Desolate race was not completely engineered by the Blood Moon. It was a result of the natural instincts between two intelligent lifeforms, wishing to vent the corrupt nature in their hearts.”

• “Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward.”

• “Maybe it’s just in his nature. Since the start of history, all those that were successful would choose not to suppress their heart. They dared to love, and dared to hate, and by yielding to their emotions, their dao-hearts became clear and tranquil, with no knots obstructing their progress. Even if the entire world was their enemy, so what of it? They would just take it in their stride. The Azure Emperor back then had the same personality as him, one that led him to soar brilliantly in the skies. But sadly, the hatred he garnered eventually became the cause of his downfall. The large-eyed elder spoke in a low voice. There were two kinds of people that would enjoy great success in life. The first kind, were people like Qin Wentian and the Azure Emperor, displaying their talent, not suppressing their heart, doing as they wished wherever and whenever they wanted it. The second kind, were those that could tolerate and endure what shouldn’t be tolerated and endured, lying to the world and even to themselves, appearing like a perfect gentleman, yet had the heart of a devil. Such a person, had a heart as deep as night, with an extremely sinister nature. The root of it all, was still one’s nature. If one’s heart was strong enough, nothing could cause it to waver.”

• “Cultivation is a path that solely belongs to oneself. Everyone takes a different path, has different levels of talent, different experiences and naturally different comprehensions. When you cultivate in the future, do not ever blindly follow the path of others because you feel that he is strong. What you have to do is to find the path most suited to you. At most, you can take another’s comprehensions as a slight reference, but do not let it direct your path. Comprehend that which you’d like, and only then will the path you tread be the most suited for yourself.” Qin Wentian smiled as he continued,

• “Cultivation has to follow one’s heart. If your heart isn’t even sure of the path you want, how can your cultivation be smooth? This is my understanding, so listen well. I won’t explain in detail my comprehensions to you, imposing onto you a concept that might do more harm than good.”

• “If you are afraid of the sword, you will die by it,”

• “Do less. Do better. Know why.”

• “My dear fellow, who will let you? That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

• “Innovate where you can. Where you can’t, use the industry standards.”

• “Oh, cherry tree, begrudge not thy blossoms as they are deflowered in the spring, for come winter, even thy sturdiest wood shall wither.”

• “My dear young cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn’t matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don’t appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet—”

• “You see, in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But I’m the goddess of marriage, you see. I’m used to perseverance. You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind.”

• “You’re not so different from me, demigod. Even when I’m out of the water, the water is within me. It is my life source.”

• “Oh, Hades if I know. But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword. As a mortal, I was never a great fighter or athlete or poet. I only made wine. The people in my village laughed at me. They said I would never amount to anything. Look at me now. Sometimes small things can become very large indeed.”

• “Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.”

Not all powers are spectacular.” Hestia looked at me. “Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding. Do you believe me?”

• “You love your work. God help you, you love it! And that’s the curse. That’s the brand on your forehead for all of them to see. You love it, and they know it, and they know they have you. Do you ever look at the people in the street? Aren’t you afraid of them? I am. They move past you and they wear hats and they carry bundles. But that’s not the substance of them. The substance of them is hatred for any man who loves his work. That’s the only kind they fear. I don’t know why. You’re opening yourself up, Roark, for each and every one of them”

• “No! I don’t want to speak of that! But I’m going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what’s in store for you. There will be days when you’ll look at your hands and you’ll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they’ll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can’t find that chance, and you can’t bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he’ll be only asking for a dime, but that won’t be what you’ll hear; you’ll hear that you’re nothing, that he’s laughing at you, that it’s written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you’ll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about that work which you love, and the things he’ll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you’ll hear the people applauding him, and you’ll want to scream, because you won’t know whether they’re real or you are, whether you’re in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you’ll say nothing, because the sounds you could make—they’re not a language in that room any longer; but if you’d want to speak, you won’t anyway, because you’ll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want? Roark sat still, the shadows sharp on his face, a black wedge on a sunken cheek, a long triangle of black cutting across his chin, his eyes on Cameron. “Not enough?” asked Cameron. “All right. Then, one day, you’ll see on a piece of paper before you a building that will make you want to kneel; you won’t believe that you’ve done it, but you will have done it; then you’ll think that the earth is beautiful and the air smells of spring and you love your fellow men, because there is no evil in the world. And you’ll set out from your house with this drawing, to have it erected, because you won’t have any doubt that it will be erected by the first man to see it. But you won’t get very far from your house. Because you’ll be stopped at the door by the man who’s come to turn off the gas. You hadn’t had much food, because you saved money to finish your drawing, but still you had to cook something and you hadn’t paid for it…All right, that’s nothing, you can laugh at that. But finally you’ll get into a man’s office with your drawing, and you’ll curse yourself for taking so much space of his air with your body, and you’ll try to squeeze yourself out of his sight, so that he won’t see you, but only hear your voice begging him, pleading, your voice licking his knees; you’ll loathe yourself for it, but you won’t care, if only he’d let you put up that building, you won’t care, you’ll want to rip your insides open to show him, because if he saw what’s there he’d have to let you put it up. But he’ll say that he’s very sorry, only the commission has just been given to Guy Francon. And you’ll go home, and do you know what you’ll do there? You’ll cry. You’ll cry like a woman, like a drunkard, like an animal. That’s your future, Howard Roark. Now, do you want it?”

• “A child. New life, like Endora. A child’s mission is to grow. To grow? I thought it was to see the world. Love. For Oceanids, this is to meld together as one. There will be no division then. That is why Oceanids need no learning or thoughts of their own. All that is needed is love. It seems that Oceanids cannot love others, for others will only drown in the embrace of pure waters. So they disguise themselves as the dreams of young children, and withdraw from the lives of all other people. Love, that is our destiny. Every day, a child takes a stumbling step forward. Every day, a stream flows into the sea. I have a whole world left to see.”

• ” The axe forgets but the tree remembers”

• “If you make a promise, you keep it, if you make a mistake, you apologize. And if you give someone a dream, you defend it to the end.”

• “What does freedom really mean, when demanded of you by a god?”

• “What you lacked was not wind. It’s courage that’s allowed you to become the first flying birds of this world.”

• “In the perpetual meantime of a sheltered eternity, most are content to live, and not to dream.But in the hidden corners where the gods’ gaze does not fall, there are those who dream of dreaming.”

• “My greatest wish? It has always been to roam free and experience the whole world. Now I would add that wherever I go, it simply must be with you! Each day with you is an adventure, and where adventurers go, storytellers must follow!”

• “The rules of war are woven in the womb: the victors shall burn bright, while the losers must turn to ash”

• “The God of Wisdom’s enemy is wisdom itself, and the oasis of knowledge is a mirage in the desert of ignorance.”

• “The war has already begun. It is just a continuation of past battles.The gods goad us on with the promise of their seven treasures. Rewards for the worthy. The doorway to divinity.Yet buried in the depths of this world lies smoldering remains, a warning to those that dare trespass.”That throne in the sky is not reserved for you”But mortal arrogation never stops.None will escape the flames.See for yourself.”

• “The world is full of lost ballads just waiting to be rediscovered”

• “The wind permeates all, cleansing both mind and body”

• “All things are impermanent, and to exist is to suffer. We yakshas have no need of sympathy or tears.”

• ” Life is a precious thing, yes… But when I think of the burden that the Conqueror of Demons must bear… sigh death seems to me to have been the easy way out. A selfish indulgence, even.”

• “Rex Lapis once said: “Ones who break their contracts shall suffer the Wrath of the Rock.”

• ” When people see the object of their dreams, how many are really able to control their desire and follow the contract…?”

• ” The story continues that some among her people realized at last that this gentle, kind, but weak god could never protect anyone in wartime. The Archon War was cruel in the extreme. Instead of consigning her to the agony of defeat, they thought, perhaps it would be better to give her a quick release.”

• ” Faith in a god who has already passed will do you no good.”

• ” History records, but history may be changed. This incident proved that. Time is a mighty force, and histories twist in its flow… I need to find a better way of recording history in order to engrave its truth. Stone carvings were one such ancient method. But unchanging stone, immovable earth, even one such as myself… Someday, we may all disappear.”

• “Kun Jun: Then again, the memories of ore can shift with the passage of time and the changing of the environment. Is there a pattern to it? Hmm, difficult to say… I feel that ore memories tend to be from the recent past. So there’s never any ancient memories? Rocks endure, but as eons pass their memories are erased. Those memories that survive are rooted in powerful emotion or thought.”

• ” The memories of rocks do not last long. Those memories that survive are rooted in powerful emotion. But as time passes, so these memories fade into obscurity. Erosion is the world’s greatest destroyer of memories. Eragon: Erosion…? Kun Jun: Erosion ground Azhdaha’s consciousness into oblivion. Slowly, he forgot the face of his old friend, and his memories of defending Liyue Harbor disintegrated. Kun Jun: Azhdaha, now incomplete, became irascible… aggressive.”

• ” Curious how swords and daggers are blind, yet their creators see so much. Perhaps empathy is mankind’s proudest achievement after all?”

• ” A heart of stone is a heart nonetheless”

• ” When the door opens, it is time to leave”

• “Zhongli : People abandon and surrender the things they love to pursue the right path. Perhaps this is the erosion imposed on me by the natural order of this world. Zhongli: But I was a god of mankind. My identity may change, but my eyes will bear witness to the history of humanity.”

• “You make a pinkie promise, you keep it all your life. You break a pinkie promise, I throw you on the ice. The cold will kill the pinkie that once betrayed your friend, the frost will freeze your tongue off so you never lie again.”

• ” Childe: Anyway, childhood dreams are all too easily shattered. Even if you just leave them be, they all fall to pieces all by themselves. Childe: So someone has to protect them, right? Childe: If you make a promise, you keep it, if you make a mistake, you apologize… Childe: And if you give someone a dream, you defend it to the end… Childe: That is what family is all about, isn’t it?”

• ” Albedo: I’m willing to pour all my energy into research, and yet specimens are finite. As the unknown transitions into the realm of scientific understanding, the feeling of enlightenment is lost. Albedo: All these things that start out as objects of fascination end up possessing the prosaic mundanity of a Sunsettia or a Sweet Flower. They cease to be noteworthy. Paimon: Oh… So that’s why you wanted to paint those hilichurls? Because you got to see something new and interesting in the differences between them? Albedo: Precisely. To quote my exact words from earlier, these creatures are, for the most part, “quite boring… not worth closer inspection.” There is precious little about them that serves to pique my curiosity now.”

• ” Albedo: sigh It would seem that that’s as far as we go. A transient bloom of incomparable beauty… Life’s proudest achievement. Pamon: Paimon thought, with all our efforts, unght have bloomed forever. And it didn’t even have any fruit… Albedo: Life is a manifold tapestry of free entities, its value shouldn’t derive from how long it stays with us. Even a momentary burst is precious. Albedo: A short life can be well-lived. A life lived efficiently, lived to perfection, is”

• ” Venti: Warriors wear their battle scars with pride, and shields are no different. Venti: Surely, an intact shield is one that has shied away from the battlefield. Is not the broken and splintered shield the one that has fought in countless wars and lived to tell the tale? Venti: Though the soldier’s body be tired and torn, still they fight till the very end, till they have no blood left to bleed. Such magnificent strength of will… is that not the true meaning of honor?”

• “You’re not an artist unless you want to quit atleast once”

• “According to Su Li’s words, this was a very stupid sword style, so only the stupidest of people could learn it. This sword style was also the most natural, because there was simply no way it could be used to face one’s enemies. It could only be used for defense. It was called the Stupid Sword because to learn this sword, there was no other method but practice through repetition, to practice until the seas dried up and stones rotted away, to practice until the stars turned and the Big Dipper moved, to practice for as long as the heavens existed and the earth persisted, such that it should be impossible for someone to ever confirm that they had learned it. When Chen Changsheng heard these words, he had completely put the idea of learning this sword out of his mind. Only when Su Li said that this Stupid Sword could be considered the world’s most powerful defensive sword style did he change his mind. Once the sword had left Mount Li, Su Li’s attainments on the path of the sword had become even more exceptional, and his experience was broad and deep. His judgment would naturally not be wrong. But when Chen Changsheng began to properly learn this Stupid Sword, he began to regret his decision. Because not even Su Li had successfully learned this sword. In all of Mount Li, even in all of the continent, there was not one person that had successfully learned this sword. Not even along the course of the interminable river of history could one find a person that had learned this sword. To describe it another way, this sword style existed only in books, existed only in some imaginary path of the sword. It had never appeared in reality. Su Li had said that the reason he had never been able to learn this sword was that he was just too much of a genius. His sword was free and unburdened, unwilling to accept such constraints. But there was truly a possibility that Chen Changsheng could learn this sword. This was because…in certain aspects, Chen Changsheng really was very stupid.”

• “Your biggest supporter is a stranger. Your biggest hater is someone you know.”

• “Somewhere in another universe, someone is writing the life you lived, are living, have yet to live, or will never live.”

• “Each of these lives is the right one, every path is the right path, everything could have been anything else, and it would have just as much meaning.”

• “If our ancestors hadn’t had this flaming urge for a feeling of importance, civilization would have been impossible. Without it, we should have been just about like animals”

• “I was here. I explored. I saw this. Remember me.”

• ” You only get a diversity of problems solved if you have a diversity of people solving them”

• “Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon awakened and there was, veritably myself again. Now do not know whether was then a man dreaming was a butterfly, or whether am now a butterfly, dreaming am a man. Between a man anda butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material thing.”

• “But he did say that many people who go insane find in insanity a feeling of importance that they were unable to achieve in the world of reality.”

• “Once I did bad and that I heard ever/Twice I did good, but that I heard never.”

• “We are born from human boxes and live in big box houses and are buried in boxes when we die. Why are you crying?”

• “Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they are always thinking only of what they want. They don’t realize that neither you nor I want to buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems. And if salespeople can show us how their services or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to feel that they are buying—not being sold.”

• “Self-expression is the dominant necessity of human nature.”

• “First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

• “All of us, be we workers in a factory, clerks in an office or even a king upon his throne—all of us like people who admire us.”

• “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language”

• “Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.”

• “This lady, left all alone in a big house with her paisley shawls, her French antiques, and her memories, was starving for a little recognition. She had once been young and beautiful and sought after. She had once built a house warm with love and had collected things from all over Europe to make it beautiful. Now, in the isolated loneliness of old age, she craved a little human warmth, a little genuine appreciation—and no one gave it to her. And when she found it, like a spring in the desert, her gratitude couldn’t adequately express itself with anything less than the gift of her cherished Packard.”

• “Talk to people about themselves,” said Disraeli, one of the shrewdest men who ever ruled the British Empire, and they will listen for hours.”

• “Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.”

• “A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still.”

• “Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride. And most citizens don’t want to change their minds about their religion or their haircut or communism or their favorite movie star.”

• “It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.”

• “Stop being patient and start asking yourself, how do accomplish my 10 year plan in months? You’ll probably fail, but you’ll be a lot further along than the person who simply thought it would take 10 years.”

• “The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can’t refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.”

• “Nothing is more important than an unread library”

• “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique

• “All fiction, in fact, is fan fiction.”

• “Take time to mess around. Get lost. Wander. You never know where it’s going to lead you.”

• “what unifies your work is the fact that you made it. One day, you’ll look back and it will all make sense.”

• “Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.”

• “The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.”

• “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

• “Work gets done in the time available.”

• “The way to get over creative block is to simply place some constraints on yourself.”

• “In the end, creativity isn’t just the things we choose to put in, it’s the things we choose to leave out.”

• “only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”

• “Weniger aber besser. The English translation is: Less but better.”

• “For the first time—literally—substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.”

• “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

• “Sunk-cost bias: studies have found that we tend to value things we already own more highly than they are worth and thus that we find them more difficult to get rid of. If you’re not quite there, ask the killer question: “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?” This usually does the trick.”

• “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

• “What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance?”

• “When we surrender our ability to choose, something or someone else will step in to choose for us.”

• “The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away—it can only be forgotten.”

• “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

• “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”

• “In every set of facts, something essential is hidden. And a good journalist knows that finding it involves exploring those pieces of information and figuring out the relationships between them”

• “By getting out there and fully exploring the problem, they were able to better clarify the question and in turn to focus on the essential details that ultimately allowed them to make the highest contribution to the problem.”

• “The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.”

• “God was not a granter of wishes.”

• “So much had been denied me, I reasoned. Why should I deny myself?”

• “Being successful is waking in the morning and being in a good mood”

• “She didn’t tell him that while coal and diamonds are both carbon, coal is too impure to be able, under whatever pressure, to become a diamond. According to science, you start off as coal and you end up as coal. Maybe that was the real-life lesson.”

• “Cheer up, love, it might never happen,’ someone said. Nothing ever did, she thought to herself. That was the whole problem.”

• “It was a familiar feeling. This feeling of being incomplete in just about every sense. An unfinished jigsaw of a human. Incomplete living and incomplete dying.”

• “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

• “The world has never complained about how busy it is. As I look deeper into myself to see why I am living such a busy life, I realize that, to a certain extent, I actually enjoy being busy.”

• “The world is experienced according to the state of one’s mind.”

• “It’s not the situation that is troubling us, but our perspective on it.”

• “Don’t struggle to heal your wounds. Just pour time into your heart and wait.”

• “Do you not feel compassion for yourself as you struggle through life? You are so eager to help your friends, but you treat yourself so poorly.”

• “What did you do as a child that excited you? How can you re-create that today?”

• “If you think you are so tough you can do anything I have a challenge for you. If you really want to do something hard: say no to an opportunity so you can take a nap.”

• “Well, while there are clearly people who can survive on fewer hours of sleep, I’ve found that most of them are just so used to being tired they have forgotten what it really feels like to be fully rested.”

• “The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”

• “The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble.”

• “The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.”

• “The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.”

• “The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.”

• “In what should have been 20 minutes of work, I compulsively interrupted myself at least nine times. What’s more, the cost of these interruptions goes way beyond the added amount of time to finish this damn thing.”

• “By last year, these interruptions had become compulsive. I didn’t know how to not distract myself anymore and had to go to great lengths to prevent it from happening. It felt like I was living in some kind of digital hellscape, where the process of doing anything significant and important seemed not only fruitless but also attentionally impossible.”

• “Our bodies are designed in such a way that they need to be challenged and stressed to a certain degree, otherwise they become soft and weak, and the smallest endeavors—walking up a flight of stairs, picking up a bag of groceries—will begin to feel difficult or impossible. It turns out that these small, conscious efforts to stress our bodies are what keeps them healthy.”

• “Basically, the name of the game is quality over quantity. Because in a world with infinite information and opportunity, you don’t grow by knowing or doing more, you grow by the ability to correctly focus on less.”

• “Freedom in the 21st century isn’t about having more, it’s about choosing your commitments to less.”

• “They say necessity is the mother of invention. Well, boredom is the father.”

• “This steady barrage of unexpected problems gives the player a sense that she lacks control over her own Life, when in fact, the purpose of Life is not to control what happens to you, but rather control and choose higher level reactions to what happens to you.”

• “The more often you use a Solution or Distraction, the easier it will be to use again, to the point where it will eventually become unconscious and automatic. Once a Solution or Distraction is unconscious and automatic, it becomes a Habit.”

• “The number one way people fuck up is by telling themselves that there’s nothing they can do about the problems Life gives them.”

• “Complaining takes a problem and then prolongs it.”

• “Most recurring fantasies we have about ourselves are reactions to our insecurities.”

• “Fantasies are like any other Distraction – they are to be used sparingly and for nothing other than pure enjoyment. It’s when they begin to sustain your sense of self-worth, your desire for importance in this world, that you will be hobbling yourself, and you will never Level Up again in Life.”

• “Without rationality, the universe would be a waste, in vain, and without purpose.”

• “Psychological research shows that people quickly adjust to their surroundings and are able to find joy in most situations, regardless of their culture, material wealth or political situation.”

• “But over the years I’ve grown to see that “feeling good” in and of itself is often overrated.”

• “Again, not to be a stick in the mud, but those happy kids playing in sewage pipes and shitting in buckets will be lucky to make it to middle age without serious violence, addiction or health problems in their lives.”

• “You realize that there’s something to be said to limiting oneself, not just geographically, but also emotionally. That there’s a certain depth of experience and meaning that can only be achieved when one picks a single piece of creation and says, “This is it. This is where I belong.”

• “Perpetual world travel literally gives you a whole world of experience. But it also takes another away.”

• “The vast majority of people don’t care what you say or do the vast majority of the time. And this is liberating.”

• “But what you quickly notice is that the world moves on. And what may feel like a suicide-inducing embarrassment for you is usually but a mild novelty or smirk for everybody around you. Understanding this is healthy. And it’s a lesson that’s hard to learn sitting comfortably at home, and spending your life shuttling between the same three or four locations every day.”

• “unsavory friends–they’re then able to see how they actually”an

• “Because once you learn that the vast majority of the planet doesn’t care who you are or what you’re doing, you realize that there is no reason to not be who you want to be. There is no one to please. There is no one to impress. Most of the time, it’s just you, yourself and the stories you invent in your mind.”

• “Because uncertainty breeds skepticism, it breeds openness, and it breeds non-judgment. Because uncertainty helps you to grow and evolve.”

• “And when you go long enough being uncertain of who you really are, what results is a form of subtle, long-term meditation–a persistent and necessary acceptance of whatever is arising, because you don’t actually know if it was the food that made you sick, and you don’t actually know if you like Eastern European cultures anymore, and you don’t really know how you feel about income inequality anymore, and you don’t know if your career path is the best for you or not, and you don’t really know if you miss your friends back home or if you just like the idea of missing your friends back home. And at some point, you just stop asking questions. And start listening. To the waves and the wind and the calls for love in all of the beautiful languages you will never understand. You just let it be. And keep moving.”

• “We tend to judge the immorality of addiction by the damage it causes to others. But Kant believed that, first, over-indulgence was fundamentally the act of being immoral to oneself. The harm it did to others was merely collateral damage. It was a failure to confront the reality of one’s own mind and own consciousness, and this failure is akin to lying to oneself or cheating oneself out of precious life potential.”

• “Respect was also sacred within Kant’s moral framework because Kant believed that all conscious creatures have a fundamental dignity that must be respected at all times, and by everyone. For Kant, consent was the act of demonstrating respect.”

• “Therefore, Kant argued, the only logical way to improve the world is through improving ourselves. This is because the only thing we can truly experience with any certainty is ourselves.”

• “He showed me that what you actually do doesn’t matter as much as the purpose behind doing it. And until you find the right purpose, you haven’t found much of anything at all.”

• “To develop character, a person must master their own actions and master themselves. And while few of us can accomplish that in a lifetime, Kant believed it’s something we each have a duty to work towards.”

• “We didnt know we were making memories. we only knew we were having fun”

• “Don’t oversaturate your life With art”

• “A wiseman speaks because he has something to say. A fool speaks because he has to say something.”

• “The key to creativity isnt in knowing all the solutions, its in asking the strongest questions.”

• “If you wish to be wealthy, learn to live like you’re poor”

• “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”

• “No one can remember more than three points.”

• “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent”

• “You are absolutely not going to be gaga over each other every single day for the rest of your lives, and all this happily ever after’ bullshit is just setting people up for failure. They go into relationships with these unrealistic expectations. Then, the instant they realize they aren’t gaga’ anymore, they think the relationship is broken and over, and they need to get out. No! There will be days, or weeks, or maybe even longer, when you aren’t all mushy-gushy in-love. You’re even going to wake up some morning and think,

• “Ugh, you’re still here….” That’s normal! And more importantly, sticking it out is totally worth it, because … in a day, or a week, or maybe even longer, you’ll look at that person and a giant wave of love will inundate you, and you’ll love them so much you think your heart can’t possibly hold it all and is going to burst. Because a love that’s alive is also constantly evolving. It expands and contracts and mellows and deepens. It’s not going to be the way it used to be, or the way it will be, and it shouldn’t be. I think if more couples understood that, they’d be less inclined to panic and rush to break up or divorce.”

• “God gave man a brain and a penis and only enough blood to operate one at a time.”

• “Respect yourself and your wife. Never talk badly to or about her. If you don’t respect your wife, you don’t respect yourself. You chose her—live up to that choice.”

• “There can be no secrets. Secrets divide you. Always.”

• “Don’t ever give up who you are for the person you’re with. It will only backfire and make you both miserable. Have the courage to be who you are, and most importantly, let your partner be who they are. Those are the two people who fell in love with each other in the first place.”

• “If you love your partner enough you will let them be who they are—you don’t own them, who they hang with, what they do or how they feel. Drives me nuts when I see women not let their husbands go out with the guys or are jealous of other women.”

• “One day many years from now, you will wake up and your spouse will be a different person—make sure you fall in love with that person, too.”

• “The relationship is a living, breathing thing. Much like the body and muscles, it cannot get stronger without stress and challenge. You have to fight. You have to hash things out. Obstacles make the marriage.”

• “But there’s no way on God’s green earth this is her fault alone. There were times when I saw huge red flags. Instead of trying to figure out what in the world was wrong, I just plowed ahead. I’d buy more flowers, or candy, or do more chores around the house. I was a “good” husband in every sense of the word. But what I wasn’t doing was paying attention to the right things… And instead of saying something, I ignored all of the signals.”

• “When you end up being right about something—shut up. You can be right and be quiet at the same time. Your partner will already know you’re right and will feel loved knowing that you didn’t wield it like a bastard sword.”

• “Everyone says that compromise is key, but that’s not how my husband and I see it. It’s more about seeking understanding. Compromise is bullshit, because it leaves both sides unsatisfied, losing little pieces of themselves in an effort to get along. On the other hand, refusing to compromise is just as much of a disaster, because you turn your partner into a competitor (“I win, you lose”). These are the wrong goals, because they’re outcome-based rather than process-based. When your goal is to find out where your partner is coming from—to truly understand on a deep level—you can’t help but be altered by the process. Conflict becomes much easier to navigate because you see … the context.”

• “You cant use possibility to justify a certainty. Base your decision on the action itself”

• “Who needs ethics when youve got a trust fund”

• “Ambition can be a valuable tool, but so can restraint”

• “You can’t connect the dots looking forward,keep learning and never stop”

• “Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.”

• “Don´t change a thing, you´re perfect as you are, and my job is to help the world to recognise the perfection that I see”

• “Never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you”

• “The only disability is ones refusal to adapt”

• “When we feel like we’re not enough, we chase external validation”

• “We tend to test others to reaffirm our worth”

• “There are no rules, only consequences”

• “The fact of death, the scarcity of time, is a catalyst for the discovery of meaning and beauty.”

• “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

• “If humans really have no value,” Keqing retorts, “then why should we expect the gods to care about us so much?”

• “Women marry men hoping to change them, and they don’t. Men marry women hoping they’ll never change, and they do”

• “You don’t stop believing in Santa. You just become Santa”

• “Sometimes it’s more economical to throw money at the problem.”

• “Buying something is never the solution to getting yourself to be more disciplined.”

• “Sorry I’m late, I got stuck on the path of life”

• “We’re just suicidal people telling other suicidal people that it’s not the answer”

• “My parents aren’t heroes, they’re just like me”

• ” What if we all looked the way we wanted? Our ideal weight became reality, our worries about money washed away. Your love life is exactly the way you pictured it. Do you think we’d all be happier? Or would we just find new things to hate?”

• “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

• “One fine day, it wil be your turn. You will leave homes, cities and countries to pursue grander ambitions. You will leave friends, lovers and possibilities for the chance to roam the world and make deeper connections. You will defy your fear of change, hold your head high and do what you once thought was unthinkable: walk away. And it will be scary. At first. But what I hope you’ll find in the end is that in leaving, you don’t just find love, adventure, and freedom. More than anything. you find you”

• ” People often overestimate what they can accomplish in a year but they underestimate what they achieve in a decade.”

• ” Most men live lives in quiet desperation”

• ” If people try to bully me, I just ignore it. I’ve got my own friends who I get on with. I don’t have a social image’ or think that everyone has to like me – it’s not realistic.”

• “Since that day I’ve never been in the center of attention. You’re the center of mine”.

• “Don’t flatter yourself darling. You think everybody’s interested in you, they’re not. Your job is to make them happy.”

• “I’ve hada lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

• “That’s the thing with time, isn’t it? It’s not all the same. Some days - some years some decades - are empty. There is nothing to them. It’s just flat water. And then you come across a year, or even a day, or an afternoon. And it is everything. It is the whole thing.”

• “But sometimes, you forget your lines and the pain trickles through the cracks.” Yep today accidentally started crying in front of my mother.

• “After all, your life has not completely fallen apart yet, so why would anyone believe you’re struggling.”

• “Best wife, best employee, best daughter, best student, keep everyone happy …but you.”

• “This is your daily reminder to ask for what you need.”

• “External goals cannot fill internal voids”

• “Then I saw a meme [that said] ‘if you died tomorrow, your job would be posted faster than your obituary”

• “I think my love with being alone stems from me knowing if l’m alone then no one is around to disturb me or alter any of my emotions. Everything is up to me. no one is there to misunderstand me, judge me, etc. It’s peaceful. A peace don’t feel often with other humans”

• “Impossible is just an opinion.”

• “Fudge! I’m gonna do it! I’m gonna go all-out! I’m gonna go so all-out that I’ll terrify myself, let alone everyone else!”

• “After one try didn’t work, he tried ten times. After ten tries didn’t work, he tried a hundred times. After a hundred tries didn’t work… he tried a thousand times.”

• “He was a generally optimistic person, an attitude he had intentionally fostered since a young age. There had been no other option. He had personally watched his parents die of illness. He remembered sitting with their corpses for days, weeping, refusing to believe that they were gone, even calling their names. Eventually, the corpses began to stink, and relatives came to bury them. Bai Xiaochun had been left in a daze, and at one point even took to talking to himself…. If a child grew up in such a manner, his entire life would be one of darkness. So Bai Xiaochun replaced the crying with laughter. He began to think about the idea of living forever. He would never forget how his parents had died, and although he missed them, it only made him want to keep living. He was stubborn and mischievous, but not to an excessive degree. Many of the things he did were even accidents. Deep down, he was a good person. He feared death, and seemed weak on the outside, but when his friends were in danger, he would fight to the death to protect them. If he needed to, he could bellow in rage and risk his life on the field of battle.”

• “No. My dreams haven’t changed. What Uncle Li said was right. The only things which truly belong to you are the things you get on your own. Even if it gets harder, I still won’t give up!”

• “The best thing was not to fight the trend; blend in, and use the rules to your advantage!”

• “Possession without possession is the most wonderful possession. Emptiness without emptiness is the true emptiness….”

• “To live forever,” he murmured, “you don’t just have to struggle against the heavens, you have to fight other people. It’s a narrow, rugged path to walk, a path that most people give up on. Many people meet defeat, or end up losing their way….”

• “Remember, the easier something is to get, the less precious it will be in the end.”

• “Smiling broadly, he thought back to the old saying: even if you have a beautiful sedan chair to sit in, you still need others to lift you up.”

• “Now that’s how grandmasters are supposed to act! The old expression says to turn weapons of war into gifts of jade and silk. It’s not easy to do, but he pulled it off perfectly. Really incredible!”

• “Xiaochun…” he said softly. “You’re right. As long as we’re alive, there are endless possibilities. But just because we die doesn’t mean that our hopes and dreams die with us!”

• “Bai Xiaochun had always thought of himself as somewhat of a nobody, and definitely not a hero. But as he proceeded through life, he had slowly come to acquire a sense of duty and responsibility.”

• “There is a force which exists in all people. In some, it can be abundant without limit. In others, it can be scarce to the extreme. It can propel some people to the point of shaking heaven and earth, and in other people, it can weaken them to the point of collapsing forever. It can give rise to endless determination, or it can remove it in an instant.”

• “Wisdom and intelligence… begin with imagination! “Imagination can turn a rock into a weapon! “Imagination can turn fire into a way to drive away darkness!

• “Imagination can make gods to worship, and form them into totems…. “When you take imagination and combine it with action, you have the first sprout of wisdom and intelligence!”

• “One Will to create oceans. One Will to summon mulberry fields. One Will to slaughter countless devils. One Will to eradicate innumerable immortals…. Only my Will… is Eternal.”

• “Innovation come from doings things differently, not doing things bigger.”

• “In an age of network tools, in other words, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.”

• “Let your mind become a lens, thanks to the converging rays of attention; let your soul be all intent on whatever it is that is established in your mind as a dominant, wholly absorbing idea.”

• “Men of genius themselves were great only by bringing all their power to bear on the point on which they had decided to show their full measure.”

• “In a post-Enlightenment world we have tasked ourselves to identify what’s meaningful and what’s not, an exercise that can seem arbitrary and induce a creeping nihilism”

• “The task of a craftsman, they conclude, “is not to generate meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill of discerning the meanings that are already there.”

• “We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.”

• “You don’t need a rarified job; you need instead a rarified approach to your work”

• “a moment can feel strangely flat if it exists solely in itself.”

• “We’re social beings who can’t ever completely ignore what other people think of us”

• “marriage or sexual possession was (and still is) largely anathema”

• “That it’s the ability to choose: what pleasure is worthwhile, what pain is worthwhile, to pursue and love unconditionally, without judgment or shame.”

• “Seeing self-discipline in terms of pure willpower fails because beating ourselves up for not trying hard enough doesn’t work. In fact, it backfires.”

• “The classic approach has the paradoxical effect of training us to feel bad about all the things that make us feel good. It basically seeks to teach us self-discipline through shaming us—by making us hate ourselves for simply being who we are. And the idea is that once we are saddled with a sufficient amount of shame about all the things that give us pleasure, we’ll be so self-loathing and terrified of our own desires that we’ll just fall in line and do what we’re told.”

• “It was a simple principle: just as one can only realize the strength of wine after one gets drunk, one can only know the value of life after one has died.”

• “And don’t use zhenqi to control your emotions. If human emotions aren’t given the proper outlet, even if your powers of zhenqi control are at their peak, you’ll become a murderous monster.”

• “Why do you wish to see this world?” Wu Zhu seemed to be pondering something,

• “the place you are standing right now, isn’t it part of this world?”

• “Since you only live once, the only way to make the most out of this unrepeatable game is to go around seeing different sights and meeting different people.”

• “Flowers fall once they appear, stones stand still a thousand years. But both must go just as they came, and floating clouds are just the same…”

• “A bright moon on a wide river, a clear breeze among the hills.”

• “While this world may appear peaceful, if you don’t steel yourself, you will always be at a disadvantage.”

• “he had always been somewhat chauvinistic, feeling that when it came to matters between men and women, it was always women who got the worst of it, and men who took advantage.”

• “Man’s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; to live that, dying, he might say: I did everything I wished to, and even if I was unsuccessful, at least I tried’.”

• “You once said that people have to be brave enough to seek happiness.”

• “one can’t be sincere without simple living, one can’t have high aspirations without a peaceful state of mind”

• “There were too many matters in this world that men’s stupid brains had made complicated.”

• “Su Ming vaguely remembered one of the scrolls saying that once the prey went through a long period of time switching between the state of anxiety and relaxation, its fatigue and suffering would increase exponentially. That sort of torture was enough to destroy one’s soul.”

• “But we are members of the Berserker tribe. We cannot fear death, much less give up because the road ahead is too hard to walk.” “I know what your dreams are. You want to leave this place and travel to see the world. I fully support you!”

• “Su Ming, you must remember. There will always be people who are stronger and more powerful than you. You must never be arrogant…”

• “He was certain of his words just like any young man who still believed in a bright future…”

• “Either he would stay away from something, or he would finish what he had started.”

• “When you are fighting against someone, do not let your focus waver. Do not hesitate. If it is possible to kill your enemy with one strike within the shortest amount of time, do not wait till the last moment to do so.”

• “The oppression of the heavens is invisible. We can only endure it and while we endure it, we must learn to live with it happily… If we do not, are we to fight against heaven?’”

• “Qi will only move when the mind moves. If the mind does not move, then Qi will also remain still!”

• “To him, there was no one who could be his opponent. The one that he wanted to compete against was himself!”

• “A person would experience great things and shortcomings in his life. He would also experience days of glory and days where he would stumble and fall. These were all things that Su Ming did not understand. The only thing he understood was that he had to do this.”

• “La Su, you are not alone in the sky. Do not be sad. Do not cry. Mama and papa will look at you from where we are… Every year, every day… we will look at you…” “I will not cry. I will not be sad. I will not be lonely. I know that you are there, watching me… I am happy…”

• “It seemed like there was no sign of life within those ruins, and they would eventually turn into a remnant of the passage of time. Perhaps the few remaining trees and plants would continue growing there and slowly turn the place into a part of the forest, making it difficult for people to come looking for their memories and the beautiful moments that had happened during their time here.”

• “Chances are hidden within danger…”

• “Instead, it would be better to emphasize the benefits of the concoction towards himself and subtly reveal some of his own thoughts that would make the other party wonder.”

• “Whatever you brag about the most is what you lack the most. “Whatever it is that you want others to know that you own the most of is what you want to possess the most.”

• “The more he wanted to obtain something, the more he would have to sacrifice. Only he could determine whether the sacrifice was equivalent to the reward and whether it was worth it, not anyone else.”

• “The mind is restless, Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train: to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds.”

• “Our job is not to “go with our gut” or fixate on the first impression we form about an issue. No, we need to be strong enough to resist thinking that is too neat, too plausible, and therefore almost always wrong. Because if the leader can’t take the time to develop a clear sense of the bigger picture, who will? If the leader isn’t thinking through all the way to the end, who is?”

• “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.”

• “Ask yourself at every moment, Is this necessary?’”

• “Before we can make deep changes in our lives, we have to look into our diet, our way of consuming. We have to live in such a way that we stop consuming the things that poison us and intoxicate us. Then we will have the strength to allow the best in us to arise, and we will no longer be victims of anger, of frustration.”

• “To become empty is to become one with the divine—this is the Way.”

• “Childlikeness’ has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks yet he does not think.”

• “Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water. Chop wood, carry water. Don’t overanalyze. Do the work.”

• “Tao is in the emptiness. Emptiness is the fast of the mind.”

• “What’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

• “Appearances are misleading. First impressions are too. We are disturbed and deceived by what’s on the surface, by what others see. Then we make bad decisions, miss opportunities, or feel scared or upset. Particularly when we don’t slow down and take the time to really look.”

• “If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that even if the truth comes and knocks at our door, we won’t want to let it in. We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge the way we climb up a ladder. If we are on the fifth rung and think that we are very high, there is no hope for us to step up to the sixth. We must learn to transcend our own views. Understanding, like water, can flow, can penetrate. Views, knowledge, and even w is d o m are solid, and can block the way of understanding.”

• “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

• “Overemphasizing metrics removes our focus from long-term concerns such as our values, trust and reputation, and our impact on society and the environment, and myopically focuses on the short-term.”

• “To be clear, life is not a race. You can switch into tech and learn new skills at any age. The tech industry is deeply ageist, and the glorification of young founders is a harmful myth.”

• “When you keep quiet in order to keep the peace you start a war within yourself.”

• ” The more you put something off the bigger it feels”

• “Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.”

• ” You never touch someone so lightly that it does not leave a Trace”

• “What is truth but a survivors story”

• “Lonliness if often the byproduct of a gifted mind”

• “We cant change what fate has in store for us, but we dont have to face it alone”

• “I’ve been up to my neck in work lately, and before I knew it, it was my birthday again. It was only then that I also realized that it’s been a long time since we last met up. How have things been lately? You’re always so busy with your travels, never stopping, not even for a moment. I suppose we’re alike like that-always seizing the day. It’s good to live to the fullest. Time waits for no one, but the fruits of our labor, the growth we experience… These are worthy harvests that will see us through in the days ahead. But of course, rest is also paramount. I have enclosed some flowers and plants that I usually make tea with. They dispel heatiness and help to relieve fatigue. Take care of yourself out there. We’ll catch up when you’re back in Liyue.”

• ” As kids, we’re scared of bugs. Running out of candies. Crossing the street. Ghosts and ghouls under the bed. Being left alone in the dark, glowing wall stars falling apart. Being laughed at for not knowing how to tell time. Time, that passes so quickly, as our castles become dungeons. As adults, our fears change with us. Now people terrify us. The ghosts are on our bed and they look so breathtakingly beautiful we want to kiss them because we miss them. Running out of money worries us. Our biological clock worries us. Driving across the street in traffic worries us. The idea of our parents growing older keeps us up at night. Rent makes us anxious, but settling down horrifies us. Bad flatmates frighten us. Bad lovers haunt us. We’re afraid of love, afraid of not finding love. Afraid of being with someone, afraid of ending up alone. Afraid of darkness, but now a different kind. So what if the bugs crawled up our legs? Or it got too spooky to look under the bed when the lights went out? We still went to sleep hugging teddy bears and replaying lullabies in our heads, didn’t we? Still went to school the next day, crossed the street, got candies again at the supermarket. Fought snow dragons, planted lilies of the valley. Made friends with fairies and baked flying cupcakes. Built homes in the planet of grief and the island in the clouds. We got by. We scraped along. Things won’t run out. The opportunities will keep coming. New lovers will arrive, the next roommate will be kinder. And we’ll survive all the ghouls, we’ll show up at work, we’ll put in the work - so rest your little heart because even the tiniest versions of us sailed past the ring of storms and made it through. We did it as children, and will as grown-ups too.”

• “What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”

• “When did you get so comfortable living in someone else’s shadow?”

• “When people look up to you, you don’t get to be selfish.”

• “Imprisonment. What a curious principle. We confine the physical body, yet the mind is still free.”

• “Surely, we, the pioneers of science, can use it for good. We’re the champions of discovery. Why fear it when we can master it?”

• “There’s a monster inside all of us.”

• “If dangerous ideas didn’t excite the imagination, we would never wander astray.”

• “When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.”

• “Nobody’s ever believed in me. A poor cripple from the undercity. I was an outsider the moment I stepped foot in Piltover. I didn’t have the benefits of a patron or a name. I simply believed in myself.”

• “You know, Powder, what makes you different makes you strong. Always remember that, okay?”

• “Loneliness is often the byproduct of a gifted mind.”

• “We can’t change what fate has in store for us, but we don’t have to face it alone.”

• “He fancies himself a fox among the wolves. But mark me, child, if you want to last in this world, you must learn to be both the fox and the wolf.”

• “I pretended to chase my own monsters away. I’d say… No monster’s gonna get you when I’m here.’ Then a real monster showed up. And I just ran away.”

• “It’s not enough to give people what they need to surive, you have to give them what they need to live.”

• “Imperfection is the digital perfection”

• “Before the advent of machine-based agriculture, representative democracy, civil rights, antibiotics and aspirin, just making it through a long life without too much suffering counted as doing pretty well. Today, though, at least in prosperous societies, people want and expect (and can usually have) a good deal more. Living simply now strikes many people as simply boring.”

• “One should treasure those humdrum tasks that keep the body occupied but leave the mind and the heart unfettered”

• “Then, let us be considering knowledge like a river of water. If you are a piece of cloth how are you finding out more about this water if someone dips in your corner and then pulls it out again or if you are having yourself thrown in without resistance so that this water is flowing all through you around you and you are becoming soaking wet?”

• ” You see the land is a book that you should be reading. Every small thing is having a story to tell. Trees leaves Moses and stones all have written on them things of wonderful interest”

• ” An exceedingly common mistake in life is axiomatic in surfing, obvious to the point of not even needing to be said: You are nature’s bitch. If she wants to give you opportunities, she will. If not, then tough cookies. No matter how great or amazing or sublime you are at what you do, if opportunities don’t come, or if they peter out under you, then you’re left alone to sink. And when the opportunities do come (and they eventually do), if you aren’t primed and ready to take advantage, if you don’t spring into action immediately and go for it, you’ll be left on the sidelines. No guts, no glory”

• ” 90% of your plans are going to fail no matter what you do. Get used to it.”

• ” Terrify yourself. Use it as your ally. Give yourself no option but your dream.”

• ” A devaluing of superficial pleasures and a greater appreciation for simple, authentic ones. I don’t really enjoy the presents at Christmas anymore, the fireworks at Fourth of July, or even the parties on New Year’s Eve. I’ve seen bigger parties, been to more beautiful places, and already own everything I’ll ever want in this life. But unlike before, I appreciate every day spent with those who mean a lot to me. A quiet beer on a patio. Watching a basketball game together. Going to a birthday party or a barbecue. These are the events I look forward to now and get excited about, days and weeks ahead of time… And that’s probably the way it should be.”

• ” I made no connection between their misfortune and my own career prospects. How could I? I was blinded by my trust in the American promise: if I got the right kind of job, then success and happiness would surely follow. This promise, however, is mostly false. It’s what the philosopher Plato called a

• “noble lie”, a myth that justifies the fundamental arrangement of society. Plato taught that if people didn’t believe the lie, then society would fall into chaos. And one particular noble lie gets us to believe in the value of hard work. We labor for our bosses’ profit, but convince ourselves we’re attaining the highest good. We hope the job will deliver on its promise, and hope gets us to put in the extra hours, take on the extra project and live with the lack of a raise or the recognition we need.”

• “You have to start romanticizing your life, you have to start thinking of yourself as the main character, cause if you don’t, life will continue to pass you by, and all the little things that make it so beautiful will continue to go unnoticed, so take a second and look around.”

• “But I was smart so nobody was worried”

• “I worked harder than anyone I knew..So, my failure was clearly my fault.”

• ” We’re all aware that the main benefit of sleep is to refresh your brain, store memories, and all that jazz. I also like to think of sleeping as a headspace reset. When you go to sleep you’re resetting your reality back to zero, but with the neurological changes of the past day intact. So new information you learned (neuronal pathways) is retained, memories are retained, habits are still ingrained, and your basic personality “firmware” is still there as it was before. What is lost is the zeitgeist of your consciousness from the previous day. That amorphous spark behind your eyes; the ever-changing you. This what tints the events of the day, your experiences, and other semi-random thoughts or reactions will affect you. For instance, you might wake up to the news of your local grocery store burning down. People were hurt; life is fragile. You might go through the day under that theme: life is fragile. Your reactions to things are different. You might feel more empathetic. When someone bumps into you, you might let it go. When someone is mean to you, you wonder if maybe they lost someone in the fire. And when old dusty memories manifest you’ll view them in an altered light. You might think of an old significant other, or when you got mad at your little brother. After the day is done you have time for introspection. You touch upon your old memories again looking for other ones that may have changed, like running your hands through your hair after a haircut; feeling for change. By now it is too late to act upon your feelings. Tomorrow you’ll call Steve and apologize for insulting him in front of his friends 3 years back. You’ll stop by where Susan works and see how she’s doing. People can leave you at a moments notice and there is so much negativity in the world. You wake up to a new day. All the information you acquired yesterday remains. You have memories of how you felt yesterday and you still feel like you. But now calling your brother just seems awkward and would Susan even remember you? Your spark reset. It booted up from the firmware, downloaded those updates from your neurons, and opened up to a fresh, blank desktop page ready for the new day. We like to think of ourselves as stable, concrete entities. The reality may not be that simple, since it is obvious that we’re constantly changing and growing. We know we’re us by the memory of being in this body and remembering the changes that have occurred to it over time, but we don’t often consider how much our mind changes with time. How much do you have in common with yourself from 10 years ago? 5 years? 4 weeks? I think that when you sleep the you of today dies. The sum of your experiences are passed on, but that version of you from September 8th is gone forever. Because you have the same memories, the same neural pathways (habits, memories, personality traits) you are sure you’re you - every piece of data you have declares it to be true. That iteration of you, that version of you reading this, is gone tomorrow. The new iteration of you will remember these words and it won’t know any better. The new spark won’t know the difference. But we can see what was lost; that flavor, that theme of the previous day. The motivation, the sadness, the anger, the introspection won’t make it through unless it is triggered again by a memory or experience that did make the transition (for better or worse). I think this is why you get those bursts of life-changing motivation that are usually gone the next day, like sand through your fingers. How do you make it stick? You need to bring triggers, links, or anchors through to tomorrow. You need to find what caused the feeling of motivation before and bring it back, otherwise it won’t come back (and sometimes it never will). Sometimes it’s subtle too. And in regards to motivation bursts… the other factor is that it is so easy to make plans the night before because you don’t have to do them now. It makes you feel good to imagine it, but nothing actually happened yet because you didn’t actually have to do anything. It’s a masturbatory exercise. Why does it keep happening? Because it feels good to imagine improving yourself, of imagining the pride when you look in the mirror or ace the test. Anything that causes a good feeling with zero work can become addictive or keep entering your mind.”

• “What we work on is easy for us not for them, best to keep it that way and the process you have for the work should always be a mystery”

• “Life is too precious to wait for someone else to join your adventure. Just go.”

• “This taught me a principle, which is the more something is a scam, the more attractive the bait is. What do they mean, they have methods to sell for a better price so they can buy at a higher price’ - I think that it’s all nonsense. Their goals are most likely impure.”

• “I’m trying to entertain people and contribute a verse to the world. but the world is composed of millions of voices, all screaming at the same time about literally everything. saying ultimately nothing. that song doesnt need anymore verses”

• “Love was like an wild horse. It didn’t listen to reason and went where it pleased. It was not constrained by ethics or by benefits to those involved. On that day, Su Chen learned an extremely important lesson. Love and rationality weren’t compatible. Some people would even claim that those who hadn’t suffered romantic loss were not well-rounded. Su Chen, having experienced his first romantic loss, had also become more shaped and well-rounded.”

• “Unfortunately, it’s just too hard. It’s a dream, impossible to realize,” Wang Doushan said, shaking his head. Perhaps. But if it’s impossible, why does that old man continue to do so? Why are there so many people dedicating themselves for this dream? “This……” Wang Doushan couldn’t find the words. Su Chen answered his own question. “Because there are always people in this world who will continue to strive even if they know it’s impossible. For the human race, these people are unafraid of hardships, and they dedicate themselves without any regrets.”

• “Humans were usually like this. As long as there was some form of relationship, they would feel that using someone was expected and even justified. If they were still charged for it, naturally that person was greedy and lacked camaraderie.”

• “Mountains don’t know the months, and the cold doesn’t know the years. Time always flies when a person is undisturbed. Very quickly, half a month passed.”

• “When the balance of strength is unequal, strength is righteousness. When the balance of strength is equal, righteousness is strength.”

• “Pursuing one’s dreams is an incredibly dangerous process. You never know what you will run into along the way. As such, at the very least I must have faith that this is not an impossible dream. Only with this conviction will I have the courage to continue onwards.”

• “In his attempting to understand the hearts of others, he was also learning more about the world that he lived in. In the past, he had relied a lot on little tricks to get his way, but as he began to grow and mature, all the while accumulating experience, he began to see the bigger picture.”

• “The more urgent the issue, the calmer you need to be and the more you need to avoid making mistakes,”

• “Laymen follow others’ movements, while wise men control the situation. It’s still the same hypothetical situation; if I had heard my opponent talk to me that much, I would have realized that my opponent was waiting for me to do something.”

• “Respect must be given to the will of every creature. Each fish in the ocean swims in its own direction.”

• “lIf enough people believe they’re real, they become real. Because they are addicted”

• “I am one who would rather suffer an eternity of destined calamities than beg for solace from the saints…”

• “Ants may be able to fly, but they will fall eventually. They shall never touch the sky,” the lad carrying the wooden sword exclaimed as he shook his head. If you hold this belief, then you will never be able to understand the true meaning of the Taoist Heart,” said the young monk as he slowly blinked his eyes, still looking down at the warring ant colonies, The lad with the wooden sword raised an eyebrow and replied with a sneer, “I will never understand how someone constrained like you is qualified to represent Xuankong Temple as its wayfarer in the world. “The ants will fly, just like they will fall. However, they are better at climbing, and they are good at letting their fellow ants climb upon them. They are not afraid of sacrifice and as they pile upon one another, as long as there are enough of them, they shall eventually pile up high enough to touch the sky”

• “Eagles should not fear ants since they are simply black dots to the former. Ants should not fear eagles either because they are not even worth a bite to the eagle. The world of the ants had never seen or heard of a creature as powerful as the eagle, hence the latter remained unfathomable to the former. Nevertheless, over the span of many centuries and millennia, a few very distinguished ants among the crowd would, out of enigmatic reasons, decide to strip their gaze from the rotten leaves and just for once, gaze up at the crystal blue sky…and then, the world was never the same to them. The fear comes from seeing.”

• “A veil was lifted off in front of my eyes when I understood that the modern society has replaced religious devotion with devotion to the material and this means that people identify with their job now that they can’t identify with a common religion or background.”

• “The ancient greeks would probably think of you as a slave if you talked about work so much. Free men pursued the arts. Anyone at my job who only talks about work, I put them in the same box.”

• “Intentionally or not, when you say words like “how pitiful,” you’re alienating yourself from the other person and their experience. It dismisses and trivializes their pain.”

• “The world’s first Mora is probably just an ordinary coin created by Rex Lapis. As for its fate? The same as all Mora, I suspect - it was simply spent somewhere.”

• “For how could a god who had never once resisted - even till the end-nurse hatred for her people in her heart?”

• “Instead of explaining yourself to me, you should face your true self.”

• “The body and the mind are one. If something worries your mind, your body can help you find a solution.”

• “Besides, they’re just kids. They should be allowed to believe it if it makes them happy. That’s more important to them than questioning what’s real and what isn’t.”

• “Yoimiya: No matter where your journey takes you, and no matter what hardships might lie ahead, I hope you’ll always be able to look back fondly on the fireworks you saw tonight. I believe that as time goes by, this firework will only grow brighter and more beautiful in your heart.”

• “Yoimiya: Fireworks that disappear in a flash of light are probably the furthest thing away from the eternity that our Shogun desires. Yoimiya: But people’s feelings don’t just disappear, and it’s those feelings that give fireworks their purpose. If nobody wanted to watch fireworks, then they wouldn’t exist. Eragon: That’s another kind of eternity. Yoimiya: Also, consider You have to the Naganoharas, because so many people are emotionally invested in the existence of fireworks. Yoimiya: If we didn’t exist, their wishes would go unfulfilled, wouldn’t they?”

• “Ei: I am me. There is only one of me, but I can exist in many different forms. It’s not important what form I exist in. Ei: The Shogun, for example, is one of my forms of existence. The question of whether or not she is me is not determined by any of her components. Paimon: In that case, this picture is one of your forms of existence, too. Ei: Hmm. So even I, who seeks Eternity, am constantly changing my form of existence… Ei: Then, how can I ask Inazuma and everyone who lives here to remain unchanging?”

• “To put it nicely, even deities indulge in wishful thinking. To put it more bluntly, there are things that even The Seven can’t do when faced with something even more powerful than themselves.”

• “Because she is a god. It’s not that gods don’t need the company of others, just that the idea of a god having company seems indulgent to her.”

• “Sometimes like uh you get so creative that you don’t know how to construct creatively the words in order to express your thought you know you just know how to create it you don’t know how to verbalize your creative ideas like kanye west for instance his interviews people didn’t know what the hell he was talking about when he was talking about his uh his clothing line right and then he created a billion dollar clothing line and i was like okay well maybe we can’t we do we should listen to kanye west maybe it’s like a bit of a genie for motivation-wise kanye is actually a really good example because this is actually a really big deal to me i feel like i have really good ideas and i can see what’s happening in my head and then i go to a professional or i go to a loved one this is this is where it really hurts me is when i go to somebody that i love and i say i got this crazy idea let me tell you about and then i tell them what’s happening scene for scene and then after that they go yeah it’s pretty cool and i’m like you don’t understand like what what i just said like that could be a full-on feature film or a tv show and they’re like yeah it’s cool it’s cool and i’m like oh that hurts it’s cool like that hurts me and then i’m thinking is it that wasn’t a good idea that wasn’t a good idea and then i’m like i don’t do it anymore you gotta know the right people to share with you you you really do you’re a little careful you you really your energy i think that’s the biggest point that i can save for motivation for me is because some people are low in their life and they don’t want anybody to be above them they want you to suffer with them and sit where they are in life and that’s not everybody but there are people that want you know they’re doing it they don’t know they’re doing it yeah they’d still love you too but they don’t want you to be better than them and subconsciously some people will bring you down that way and some people are just like yeah it’s cool because they can’t see what’s in your head but for me i can see what’s in my head this is this is what happened personally with me and one of my students they were trying to explain to me what they were their story was about i’m like yeah that’s cool and i don’t know if i didn’t motivate them or not but and i just couldn’t really imagine what they were talking about it was just words all right they’re just going blah blah blah blah blah and i’m like yeah yeah yeah keep on talking and then they showed me what they were working on a week later and i’m like this is incredible i didn’t know that this is what you were talking about these were your words last week this is like this hit me in my heart and i wish that you could have explained it that way but you can’t explain it you have to show it through your art and put music in it don’t lose motivation whenever somebody says yeah that’s a cool idea or whatever because they don’t know what’s in your flipping head that’s the biggest thing that i would say i would walk away from the main thing to walk away from is that everybody has their own type of motivation and we’ve all shared our types of motivation and if you don’t like it you can probably just shut up”

• “Beware of destination addiction… until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.”

• “The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.”

• “No wonder I have been so slow, I thought. All this while, I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail.”

• “Gods hate all toil, it is their nature.”

• “Each spell was a mountain to be climbed anew. All I could carry with me from last time was the knowledge that it could be done.”

• “Zeus so angry.” “Tell me,” he said, “who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one?” “A happy one, of course.” “Wrong,” he said. “A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred.”

• “You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”

• “I watched her dance, arms curving like wings, her strong young legs in love with their own motion. This was how mortals found fame, I thought. Through practice and diligence, tending their skills like gardens until they glowed beneath the sun. But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.”

• “But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”

• “A golden cage is still a cage.”

• “Every moment mortals died, by shipwreck and sword, by wild beasts and wild men, by illness, neglect, and age. It was their fate, as Prometheus had told me, the story that they all shared. No matter how vivid they were in life, no matter how brilliant, no matter the wonders they made, they came to dust and smoke.”

• “Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating.”

• “The fear of missing out goes into full effect. How can we say no; the offer is right here for the taking. We might never have gone after it, but now it is so easy to get it we consider it. But if we just say yes because it is an easy reward, we run the risk of having to later say no to a more meaningful one.”

• “This feeling is normal; studies have found that we tend to value things we already own more highly than they are worth, and thus find them more difficult to get rid of.”

• “Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.”

• “It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.”

• “My friend Tony Keppelman snapped me out of it by asking if I was gonna quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy. You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re taking a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful.” That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.”

• “The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.”

• “The professional has learned, however, that too much love can be a bad thing. Too much love can make him choke. The seeming detachment of the professional, the cold-blooded character to his demeanor, is a compensating device to keep him from loving the game so much that he freezes in action.”

• “The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery.”

• “The professional shuts up. She doesn’t talk about it. She does her work.”

• “The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. The professional is sly. He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.”

• “Boys,” said Kulgan, shaking his head. “You hold a festival, give them a badge of craft, and suddenly they expect to be men. But they’re still boys, and no matter how hard they try, they still act like boys, not men.”

• “We live a very long time by your standards. We learn to appreciate the humor in the world, often finding amusement in places where men find little. Or you can call it simply a different way of looking at life.”

• “As human beings we belong to an extremely resilient species. Since time immemorial we have rebounded from our relentless wars, countless disasters (both natural and man-made), and the violence and betrayal in our own lives. But traumatic experiences do leave traces, whether on a large scale (on our histories and cultures) or close to home, on our families, with dark secrets being imperceptibly passed down through generations. They also leave traces on our minds and emotions, on our capacity for joy and intimacy, and even on our biology and immune systems.”

• “Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot… . It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it.”

• “The lack of literature on the topic was a handicap, but my great teacher, Elvin Semrad, had taught us to be skeptical about textbooks. We had only one real textbook, he said: our patients. We should trust only what we could learn from them—and from our own experience. This sounds so simple, but even as Semrad pushed us to rely upon self-knowledge, he also warned us how difficult that process really is, since human beings are experts in wishful thinking and obscuring the truth. I remember him saying: “The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.” Working at the VA I soon discovered how excruciating it can be to face reality. This was true both for my patients and for myself.”

• “You live through that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneous with yours… . What you are is an expression of History.”

• “If you do something to a patient that you would not do to your friends or children, consider whether you are unwittingly replicating a trauma from the patient’s past.”

• “why they are only attracted to people who hurt them. Fear and aversion, in some perverse way, can be transformed into pleasure.”

• “You observe a lot by watching.”

• “Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. But the body continues to keep the score.”

• “It is only that in these troubled hours things are seen more clearly. The lamps of cities blur many shadows that are plain beneath the moon.”

• “That way, home could never be taken from him. Was this what the doctor meant? To be the same person no matter where you went, no matter what madness occurred”

• “Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”

• “It seems almost impossible to disidentify from the mind. We are all immersed in it. How do you teach a fish to fly? Here is the key: End the delusion of time. Time and mind are inseparable. Remove time from the mind and it stops unless you choose to use it.”

• “There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.”

• “Everything is honored, but nothing matters. Forms are born and die, yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms. You know that “nothing real can be threatened.”

• “A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.”

• “Auri closed her eyes and put the sheet back in the drawer, shame burning in her chest. She was a greedy thing sometimes. Wanting for herself. Twisting the world all out of proper shape. Pushing everything about with the weight of her desire.”

• “There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.”

• “Humor opens closed hearts. Humor can free us from the grip of our thoughts. When we smile, we feel we can accept things we previously could not.”

• “Moving forward inevitably invites further loss, but also new encounters.”

• “People flee out of a desire to live on. And the desire to live on stems from a feeling of having unfinished business in life.”

• “Good things don’t last forever. Everything changes, fades, disappears completely over the passage of time. And so, people must make the most of the life they have, seize the chance to enjoy it while it lasts, and have no regrets in the end”

• “Artist block is what happens when you start judging the outcome before it has a chance to come out.”

• “If one can realize the original substance in which there is neither good nor evil, one will know what absolute Nothing is. And then all will, knowledge, and things will emerge from Nothing. Once this is done, it settles everything. Effort is substance. This truth is simple and direct. It is neither too much nor too little. This is the secret to be passed from one mind to another.”

• “When the mind is in the absolute present it will be free from the departing of the past and the coming of the future, and will be unified.”

• “Sometimes when you are not getting the love you want, giving makes you feel like you will”

• “As you shout into the woods, so they echo back.”

• “What I like most about what I do is that this teaching does not belong to anyone, it could belong to anyone. What matters is how to transmit those teachings to others”

• “It is not good to listen to your mind. Let’s not be enslaved by it”

• “Everything starts with observing”

• ” I wouldn’t change anything about my brain and the way it works. It’s fucked up so many things for me over the years, lost me jobs, ruined relationships, got me in trouble with the law, caused me serious physical harm and damn near killed me, but it’s all been anything but ordinary! Now I know more about the executive functions that ADHD impairs and understand the affect it has had on my life, I’ve learned to appreciate the good things. We’re the ones who take a path for the first time, who swim in that water for the first time, who push the limits further than anyone else and the latest scientific evidence suggests we evolved for precisely this purpose. We’re life’s path-finders.”

• “Forty-five percent of what we do every day is habitual ,” say the researchers,

• ” performed almost without thinking in the same location or at the same time each day, usually because of subtle cues .”

• “It’s because when you start to suffer, you speed up. And then you get mad.”

• “As one child described it, being gifted can feel like an abandoned alien waiting for the mother ship to come and take them home”

• “When you have a grasp on eternity your eyes won’t ever see the battle or the lost people that hurt you. You will see a beautiful story of hope, in every character.”

• “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable”

• “It’s precisely because these connections don’t last that they are so meaningful. They exist in their own right. Their only value is what they are in the now. Not what is expected of them in the future.”

• “We’re programmers. Programmers are, in their hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place flat and build something grand. We’re not excited by incremental renovation: tinkering, improving, planting flower beds”

• “There’s a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming It’s harder to read code than to write it.”

• “Humans will “create” a field of study on top of a field of study, assign things categories and names, invent all of this stuff, become really good at it, and then conclude nothing is really known. Let’s go back to the part where we created a field of study. Full stop.”

• “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite”

• “Stress is the adult word for fear”

• “I’ve spent so much time in my head and in my heart that I forgot to live in my body.”

• “As a storyteller she had to make an implicit pledge that if the sultan followed along on the journey, he would be rewarded. She needed to present a character with whom he could identify with on his quest. He could imagine that he himself was on the journey. To keep the sultan’s continued interest she would have to keep topping herself and keep the sultan guessing as to whether each character would succeed or fail in his or her quest. Another one of her tricks was to some- times allow the sultan more knowledge than the characters knew themselves. When he knew more than the characters did, he was led to anticipate horrible things that might happen to them.”

• “Learning how to avoid pain itself is pleasurable.”

• “We are made of stories”

• “When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you’ll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they’re misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?”

• “Liminal means ‘Intermediate between two states, conditions, or regions,’ So a ‘liminal space’ can be a threshold or borderland where we can pass from one area to another. As we move through such spaces in life, we may enter a ‘liminal state,’ an experience of ambiguity or disorientation, before we cross over, transformed.”

• “You know what your problem is? You’re smart. Too smart. You over think, because your mind moves at a million miles a minute. You’re sad, because you’re not fooled by the world like everyone else. You don’t get along with most people, because they just don’t look at things the way you do. You think you’re dumb, because you’re smart enough to know you don’t know everything. Your problem is you’re too smart. And that’s not a problem at all.”

• “The only reward for hard work is more work.”

• “People generally fail to understand that complexity does not arise from complexity. Rather, it arises from simplicity, the simplicity of the tools”

• “Theoretical knowledge is table stakes for research taste. You can’t have research taste in a vacuum.”

• “When you identify such a mess, the natural inclination of many people is to shy away, to find something that is easier to understand. But a field that is a mess is really an opportunity. Chances are good that there are deep unifying and simplifying concepts still waiting to be understood and developed by someone - perhaps you.”

• “It’s like we’re launching expeditions with complex equipment to reach more and more remote islands and tall mountains… and the biology stops at measuring the size and weight of the animals we find.”

• “Every model is its own entire world of beautiful structure waiting to be discovered, if only we care to look.”

• “I suspect that a lot of “brilliant insights” are natural next steps from someone who has deep intimacy with a research topic. And that actually seems more profound.”

• “Why is fantasy (magic, the force, etc) so emotionally compelling to many of us? Why is actually getting magic-like abilities from technology less profound? I think this points to important unmet needs and failings of technology. The easy answer is that magic is a power fantasy: it would give one power or make one special. But that doesn’t really ring true to me. I imagine magic being compelling if everyone had it. Conversely, not all fantastical powers I could imagine are emotionally resonant. Another possible answer is that we’re deadened to the wonder of technology and science. We’ve lost our sense of awe. If magic existed, it might lose awe too. I think that’s closer to true, but something is still missing. I think the crucial thing is that I imagine magic as humane and intimate, while technology is often alienating and distant in practice. The Force is compelling because who doesn’t want to be profoundly directly connected to the universe? I also feel like magic often gets at a desire for our feelings to fundamentally matter. When I feel deep emotions, it feels as though they ought to directly affect the world, but they don’t. In many fantasy worlds, emotions are reified first class objects. (How would the experience of life be different if rooms shook when people experienced severe grief or anger? If lighting and subtle sound effects were different around someone who is deeply serene or joyful? This seems physically possible.)”

• “My day job is to speak in an arcane snake language to a crystal vibrating at 3,000,000,000 cycles per second sitting in a cloud so that it can alter probabilities in the real world. If that isn’t magic what is.”

• “When I can inhabit this mindset of loneliness being sacred in some sense, it adds a kind of beauty to an otherwise quite sad experience. I also suspect it might protect against some of the ways loneliness can be corrosive.”

• “No artist tolerated reality.”

• “2 week experiment. 6 month plan”

• “And then one day, EVERYTHING that you planned will come across an UNPLANNED scenario. Things will CHANGE. The WORLD around you will change. CHOICES, Outcomes & even Mindset’s would change. Everything you were once HELLBENT about not doing, would be EASY feat for you. What once made you CONTENT, would not be ENOUGH. That’s the only constant truth about LIFE. It will change. People, Minds, Hearts, Dreams, Best Friends, Status, Everything. Look back at your last decade & you would know it’s true. So Live it up TODAY, because TOMORROW, even what is today might CHANGE.”

• “Our minds are like furry little gibbons: always agitated, never at rest”

• “Another study, out of Yale, looked at the part of the brain known as the default mode network (DMN), which is active when we’re lost in thought—ruminating about the past, projecting into the future, obsessing about ourselves. The researchers found meditators were not only deactivating this region while they were practicing, but also when they were not meditating.”

• “It was a little embarrassing to be reading a self-help writer and thinking, This guy gets me. But it was in this moment, lying in bed late at night, that I first realized that the voice in my head—the running commentary that had dominated my field of consciousness since I could remember—was kind of an asshole.”

• “What the science was showing was that our levels of well-being, resilience, and impulse control were not simply God-given traits, our portion of which we had to accept as a fait accompli. The brain, the organ of experience, through which our entire lives are led, can be trained. Happiness is a skill.”

• “Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else.”

• “between me and reality. As one Buddhist author put it, the “craving to be otherwise, to be elsewhere” permeated my whole life.”

• “According to the Buddha, we have three habitual responses to everything we experience. We want it, reject it, or we zone out. Cookies: I want. Mosquitoes: I reject. The safety instructions the flight attendants read aloud on an airplane: I zone out. Mindfulness is a fourth option, a way to view the contents of our mind with nonjudgmental remove. I found this theory elegant, but utterly unfeasible.”

• “the only way to tame the monkey mind, to truly glimpse impermanence and defeat our habitual tendency toward clinging, was to meditate—and I had absolutely no intention of following their advice. Meditation struck me as the distillation of everything that sucked hardest about the granola lifestyle. I pictured myself seated in an unbearable cross-legged position (my disavowal of yoga having left me less limber than I would have liked) in a room that smelled like feet, with a group of smug “practitioners” ringing bells, ogling crystals, intoning om, and attempting to float off into some sort of cosmic goo. My attitude was summed up nicely by Alec Baldwin’s character on 30 Rock, who said,

• “Meditation is a waste of time, like learning French or kissing after sex.” Compounding my resistance was my extremely limited attention span. (Another of the many reasons I went into TV.) I assumed there was no way my particular mind—whirring at best, at worst a whirlwind—could ever stop thinking.”

• “The ego thrives on drama. It keeps our old resentments and grievances alive through compulsive thought.”

• “Meditation suffers from a towering PR problem, largely because its most prominent proponents talk as if they have a perpetual pan flute accompaniment. If you can get past the cultural baggage, though, what you’ll find is that meditation is simply exercise for your brain.”

• “When you’re totally present, whatever the situation is, good or bad, it’s gonna pass. The only thing that remains is the moment.”

• “When you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present.”

• “Striving is fine, as long as it’s tempered by the realization that, in an entropic universe, the final outcome is out of your control. If you don’t waste your energy on variables you cannot influence, you can focus much more effectively on those you can. When you are wisely ambitious, you do everything you can to succeed, but you are not attached to the outcome—so that if you fail, you will be maximally resilient, able to get up, dust yourself off, and get back in the fray. That, to use a loaded term, is enlightened self-interest.”

• “We all have an innate feeling of being separate from the world, peering out at life from behind our own little self, and vying against other isolated selves. But how can we truly be separate from the same world that created us? “Dust to dust” isn’t just something they say at funerals, it’s the truth. You can no more disconnect from the universe and its inhabitants than a wave can extricate itself from the ocean.”

• “We can do more than just think; we also have the power simply to be aware of things—without judgment, without the ego. This is not to denigrate thinking, just to say that thinking without awareness can be a harsh master.”

• “The Buddha embraced an often overlooked truism: nothing lasts—including us. We and everyone we love will die. Fame fizzles, beauty fades, continents shift. Pharaohs are swallowed by emperors, who fall to sultans, kings, kaisers, and presidents—and it all plays out against the backdrop of an infinite universe in which our bodies are made up of atoms from the very first exploding stars. We may know this intellectually, but on an emotional level we seem to be hardwired for denial.”

• “None of us has moved very far from the seven-year-old who vigilantly watches to see who got more.”

• “If you’re never looking up, I now realized, you’re always just looking around.”

• “It’s not me telling you,” she said. “It’s neuroscience that would say that our capacity to multitask is virtually nonexistent. Multitasking is a computer-derived term. We have one processor. We can’t do it.” “I think that when I’m sitting at my desk feverishly doing seventeen things at once that I’m being clever and efficient, but you’re saying I’m actually wasting my time?”

• “Yes, because when you’re moving from this project to this project, your mind flits back to the original project, and it can’t pick it up where it left off. So it has to take a few steps back and then ramp up again, and that’s where the productivity loss is.” This problem was, of course, exacerbated in the age of what had been dubbed the “info-blitzkrieg,” where it took superhuman strength to ignore the siren call of the latest tweet, or the blinking red light on the BlackBerry. Scientists had even come up with a term for this condition:

• “continuous partial attention.” It was a syndrome with which I was intimately familiar, even after all my meditating.”

• “I was a frequent mental inventory taker, scanning my consciousness for objects of concern, kind of like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts.”

• “Thoughts calcify into opinions, little seeds of discontent blossom into bad moods, unnoticed back pain makes me inexplicably irritable with anyone who happens to cross my path.”

• “The voice comes braying in as soon as we open our eyes in the morning, and then heckles us all day long with an air horn. It’s a fever swamp of urges, desires, and judgments. It’s fixated on the past and the future, to the detriment of the here and now. It’s what has us reaching into the fridge when we’re not hungry, losing our temper when we know it’s not really in our best interest, and pruning our inboxes when we’re ostensibly engaged in conversation with other human beings. Our inner chatter isn’t all bad, of course. Sometimes it’s creative, generous, or funny. But if we don’t pay close attention—which very few of us are taught how to do—it can be a malevolent puppeteer.”

• “Do you know what normally happens after your funeral? In a few hours the cry sound will be completely stopped. Family will be busy ordering food from hotels for relatives.. Grandchildren running and playing. Some men would go to the tea shop for walk before going to bed. Your neighbour will be angry, thinking that your people may have thrown the Ritual leaves close to their gate. A relative will talk to your daughter on the phone about not being able to come in person due to an emergency situation. At the next day’s dinner, few relatives get reduced, and few complains not having enough salt in the curry. Foreign relations would have secretly planned tourism, as if they had never looked so far on the way there. A relative may be complaining about funeral that he has spent a few hundred rupees more on his share. The crowd will slowly begin to dissolve.. In the coming days Some calls may come to your phone without knowing you are dead. Your office will be rushing to find someone to replace you. One week later, after hearing the news of your death, Some Facebook friends may search with curious sadness to know what your last post was. In two weeks your son and daughter will return to work after their emergency leave get over. By the end of the month, Your spouse will be watching a comedy show and laughing. In the coming months, your close relationships will return to the cinema and the beach. Everybody’s life will go back to normal Just as there is no difference between a withered leaf of a big tree and what you live and die for, it all happens so easily,so fast, without any movement. Rains have started, the election is coming, the crowds on the buses are as usual, an actress is getting married, the festival is coming, the World Cup cricket is going as planned, the flowers are in full bloom, and your pet gave birth to next puppy. You will be forgotten by this world at an astonishing pace. In the meanwhile your first year death anniversary will be celebrated in a grand manner. In the blink of an eye Years have passed and there is no one to talk about you. One day, just looking at old photos, one of your close friend may remember you, In your hometown, of the thousands of people you’ve become acquainted with, only one person may remember and talk about sometime. You maybe living elsewhere, as someone else, if reincarnation is true. Tell me now… Otherwise, you will be nothing and will be plunged into darkness for decades. People are waiting to forget you easily Then who are you running around for? And who are you worried for? For most part of your life, say 80%, you think about what your relatives and neighbors think about you.. Are you living a life to satisfy them? NO USE Life is only Once, just live it up Fully”

• “Be good to yourself first, then to others”

• “When we say that someone is “good,” we often mean that the person complies with the will of others and isn’t self-assertive. In other words, people who are good at suppressing their own desires in deference to another’s are the ones who frequently get called “good.”

• “But the problem is that, by living in accordance with the demands of others, we unwittingly neglect our own desires and needs. If as a child you were indifferent to your own feelings, minimizing them or not considering them important, as an adult you will not be able to tell what it is you yourself want to do, or who you are as a person. And then when you encounter someone who treats you unfairly or makes things difficult for you, since you do not know how to properly express your own feelings, the anger that ought to be directed toward its instigator is trapped inside you and ends up attacking you instead.

• “Why am I such an idiot, that I can’t express my feelings properly, can’t even speak up honestly?”

• “One of our common mistakes is to compare how we feel inside with how our friends appear outside.”

• “Compare yourself not with others, but with the old you”

• “Not everything that appears in your mind is true.”

• “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

• “Don’t let the internet rush you. Nobody is posting their failures”

• “Any half-awake materialist well knows – that which you hold holds you.”

• “The more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you”

• “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”

• “Our actions will always follow the true desire of our heart. What our heart believes and loves always determines the path of our life. We can mask our true wants for only a short while. Without a true heart change, we always return to our heart’s first love.”

• “Becoming minimalist has modeled for my children that personal belongings are not the key to happiness, that security is found in their character, and that the pursuit of happiness runs a different road than the pursuit of possessions.”

• “Madison Avenue has controlled our finances for too long. Since the day we were born, it has told us what needs to be bought, when it needs to be purchased, and what store we should visit to find the best value. When we chose freedom from material possessions, we broke the control that our consumer-driven, capitalistic society has had over us. Suddenly, we have been freed to use our finances to pursue endeavors far greater than those offered at our local department store.”

• “Everything has a home.”

• “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”

• “Do not be tense, but ready; not thinking, but not dreaming; not being set, but flexible. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware, and alert; ready for whatever may come.…”

• ” “Never assert yourself against nature,” he told him. “Never be in frontal opposition to any problem, but control it by swinging with it.”

• “To be like water, then, is to realize your most whole, natural, and actualized self where you are living as much as possible in the slipstream of life as you forge your own path forward.”

• “Using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation.”

• “water basics that I want us to begin to sit with—that water is undeterred. It will carve canyons into mountains over centuries.”

• “To be like water is not to be aspiring to perfection. Perfection is a difficult master. To be like water is not to be controlling of everything. Control is a tight yoke.”

• “But I decided to be present with what was happening and stop resisting it. I gave the future of the project to the universe, and I said, “Show me the way.” And like water, I began to follow the course of this new unfolding rather than try to build a thousand dams to enforce the direction of the stream.”

• “I’m participating and cocreating, but no longer forcing.”

• “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

• “This ship is seeking knowledge. All of the things people tell you to seek out in life - a college degree, a job, a paycheck, awards, research publications, critical acclaim, etc. - all of these things happen as a result of seeking knowledge. If you live your life by this guiding principle, you’ll never be lead astray. However, if you start to chase the wake of your ship - the job, the piece of paper that says you earned a college degree, etc. - you’ll end up chasing your tail and halting any sense of forward progression.” For example, if you go through college seeking a high GPA and the end overall degree, you tend to miss out on the most formative aspects of higher education. However, if you approach college seeking knowledge and challenging yourself, you’ll typically end up with a good GPA and graduate with a degree - the “wake” which came as a result of knowing how to orient your “ship.”

• “You will learn more about God on a bus stop, in an unemployment life, through the death of a loved one, than you ever will by just listening to a sermon.”

• “And every platform, especially image-conscious ones like Instagram, encourages a constant cosplay of the self — to project someone cooler, hotter, and happier than we really are. It’s perhaps not surprising that we’re losing track of who we are when we power down our screens.”

• “Machine learning methods change every year, solving problems stays the same.”

• “The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.”

• “No religion is the only religion, no church the true church.”

• “Perhaps nowhere is our human mania for possessing, our delusion that the owned cannot have a soul of its own, more harmful to us. This disanimation justified all the horrors of the African slave trade. If the black man is so stupid that he can be enslaved, he cannot have the soul of a white man, he must be a mere animal.”

• “Even the simplest knowledge of the names and habits of flowers or trees starts this distinguishing or individuating process, and removes us a step from total reality towards anthropocentrism.”

• “We shall never fully understand nature (or ourselves), and certainly never respect it, until we dissociate the wild from the notion of usability - however innocent and harmless the use. For it is the general uselessness of so much of nature that lies at the root of our ancient hostility and indifference to it.”

• “Man is a highly acquisitive creature, brainwashed by most modern societies into believing that the act of acquisition is more enjoyable than the fact of having acquired, that getting beats having got.”

• “Ordinary experience, from waking second to second, is in fact highly synthetic (in the sense of combinative or constructive), and made of a complexity of strands, past memories and present perceptions, times and places, private and public history, hopelessly beyond science’s powers to analyse. It is quintessentially ‘wild’ … unphilosophical, irrational uncontrollable, incalculable.”

• “These question-boundaries …are ours, not of reality. We are led to them, caged by them not only culturally and intellectually, but quite physically, by the restlessness of our eyes and their limited field and acuity of vision.”

• “Evolution had turned man into a sharply isolating creature, seeing the world not only anthropocentrically but singly, mirroring the way we like to think of our private selves.”

• “We lack trust in the present, this moment, this actual seeing, because our culture tells us to trust only the reported back, the publicly framed, the edited, the thing set in the clearly artistic or the clearly scientific angle of perspective.”

• “People who live their lives in fear are destined to have uncomfortable feet”

• “You can’t find happiness where you lost it”

• “You wouldn’t care as much about what people think about you if you realize they seldom do.”

• “We give up , because we feel , we are getting judged , because that’s what society does to us all the time.”

• “e, humans, find reasons for almost anything. We love the thought of giving meaning to things, especially to our existence. We are such creatures. I think it stems from our fears. Fear of being insignificant, fear of being a victim of circumstances, fear of having no importance, etc. I believe it’s a defense or coping mechanism. It’s our go-to as thinking beings.”

• “We humans, we’re all the same. Every last one of us. For some it’s drinking, for some it’s women, for some even religion, family, the king, dreams, children…power. All of us had to spend our lives drunk on something else we’d have no cause to keep pushing on. Everyone…was a slave to something.”

• “I’m simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”

• “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.”

• “What do you do from morning to night? I endure myself”

• “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

“After having struggled madly to solve all problems, after having suffered on the heights of despair, in the supreme hour of revelation, you will find that the only answer, the only reality, is silence.”

• “Everything that is formulated becomes more tolerable.”

• “Every man is happy until happiness is suddenly a goal”

• “The truth is, you are already worthy of being loved. You don’t need to be convinced of your self-worth by taking on society’s demands and living up to its expectations. You already are a precious being and deserve to be loved and cared for. Look inside and see if you can find the child within you, still shaking with anxiety because of his father. Send the energy of loving-kindness to that inner child, and look at him compassionately. How difficult it must have been, coping with your father’s rage alone, trying to protect your siblings, without even your mother to help you.”

• “I sometimes believe my mom caused me to have ADHD or at least she worsened it. I can see a lot of correlations, like my “laziness” (her words) coming from her lack of parenting and holding me accountable in a normal way. Or the way that I zone out a lot / have issues focusing being because of a list of reasons including dissociation to protect myself or being use to being unheard. It’s kind of hard to explain it all, but you get the point hopefully.”

• “I woke up yesterday at noon. but for today”

• “Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.”

• “Shower your child with attention, and make her feel secure in your love. This way she won’t grow up starved for other people’s acknowledgment.”

• “Special moments are not separate from our everyday lives. When you make use of something special, it makes the moment special.”

• “Are you looking to move onwards and upwards or run away? Look before you leap, you don’t want to appear the fool do you?”

• “Lengthy deliberation often leads to a terrible decision. If you think and worry too much before doing something, your boat goes to the mountain instead of the ocean.”

• “We are so good at creating something from nothing that we make our own lives fantasy and give ourselves a hard time. Color dodge the shit out of your life. Only you can.”

• “No one is going to break the cycle until they accept who they are, and what they are, and what they’ve done, and they forgive themselves. You can’t move forward unless you forgive yourself. A lot of people don’t know that. So they live in guilt and shame for so long.”

• “Nature does not hurry yet everything is accomplished”

• “O archon seeker, do you now understand? She and her wisdom have long been found by you. Along your journey we were in every flower and blade of grass, every ray of sparkling sun, and every breath of dancing wind. So long as you continue to think and ponder, well be wherever you go.”

• “Fate will only ever show you the beginning of a journey. It is up to you for forge your own ending.”

• “Analogies are wonderful tools. They let you use existing knowledge to understand unfamiliar things.”

• “I believe that the Archons revelations are never more than vague hints. Anything more specific is beyond the reach of mere mortals.”

• “If you trust your instincts and overcome your fears, the sun will surely rise”

• “Knowledge always comes at a price.”

• “Tomorrow will come. Everyone assumes this as common knowledge, but the only way you can know for sure is if you experience tomorrow. How many ‘today’s’ has it been? Is it possible that today will be followed by yesterday? Does tomorrow truly exist as anything beyond a made up concept?”

• “That’s why it makes no sense to waste your energy thinking about things you will learn tomorrow.”

• “Dreams are fantastical, complex and full of imagination. Peoples brains are most active when they’re dreaming. In other words, the dreams are rich bundles of human wisdom.”

• “There will always be frustrations in life, but I know that the point of living is to not leave behind any regrets.”

• “When the north wind blows, some dandelion seeds are blown across the sea to Inazuma, while others get swept away to Liyue.”

• “Jeht: I don’t have family traditions, and I don’t even remember my mother’s face. I only have you, and you only have me. There is no large tree and no branches that tie us together. Jeht: You might have left the desert long ago, and this might be my first time seeing it for myself, but I have this feeling that we are like grains of sand here in the desert. Jeht: No family, no objective… But what we are is pretty free. Haha! Paimon: Jeht… Jebrael: The desert holds only the past. It has no future. If what lies beneath the sand and wind can be described as the truth, then I can only say that it perhaps isn’t something that will bring joy to everyone. Jebrael: I gave up the path of seclusion, not because it’s a mistaken path, but because I found a better path. Jeht, I hope you’ll be able to take that bright path. Jeht: I don’t really understand you. If the path of sand isn’t what you desire, then why accept Tirzad’s commission? Don’t tell me it’s because you want to take a look at your past. Jeht: I think you just can’t forget the desert and the hot winds that sweep it. Jeht: The strange thing is that I have no memories of the desert, but coming here makes me feel like I’ve returned home all the same. Jeht: I love the sand, just like I love Paimon and Benben.”

• “O stars high above the wasteland; O nightingales weary from the day; It’s time to take off the crown of roses; Cleanse yourself with wine made from grapes. Sleep, close your eyes; Yon golden slumber summons thee, wandering sand; Drink not that bitter salt water; For the sorrows of tomorrow have gone away.”

• “Underestimate the sand and you’ll pay with your life.”

• “The door is protecting something very important, and so much time has passed that it has almost forgotten how it used to open.”

• “Coming to the desert is like returning home, and in the end, I’m a grain of sand. I was born here, and I shall be buried here as well.”

• “Ufairah and I were like a bird and a fish, but Al-Ahmar’s secrets allowed our fates to intertwine. Now, you and I, people from different lands, are again here for those very same secrets.”

• “A man chained by hatred cannot raise a daughter.”

• “There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I might not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was—and then no more of Thee and Me.” “Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say: Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?”

• “Agree to disagree. But, your appearance just made this a whole lot more interesting.”

• “Every journey has its end. Don’t rush.”

• “Some say a few are chosen and the rest are dregs; But I say we humans have our humanity. We will defy this world with a power from beyond.”

• “Then, the threads of all fate will be yours to reweave…”

• “Beauty is a waste when the beholder has no taste.”

• “Nobody ever feels alone when they set off a firework”

• “There will always be those who dare to brave the lightning’s glow”.

• “Even if an antique is priceless, the happiness it brings lasts for only the moment you obtain it.”

• “I know, I know, you can’t get me out of your mind. But you really don’t need to call my name all the time.”

• “Never stop searching, even for a brief flash of light”

• “We have always… had enough time”

• “People believe whatever they want to believe. Some things they do not see,simply because they do not wish to look.

• “To endure hardship you must prepare for hardship”

• “What you might not realize is that all too often… people have far more to lose by chasing their dreams”

• “A heart made of stone is a heart nonetheless”

• “If you’re not willing to communicate, then the problem just sits there. If you just keep staring at it without doing anything, eventually you’ll watch every last opportunity to resolve it slip away before your eyes”

• “Where our legs cannot take us, maybe our tools can. And when tools fail us, perhaps wings can carry us instead.”

• “The spirit soars the mountains high, while the body rests as the world goes by… By wave and storm I hunt for fish, by wind and snow I slay evil…”

• “Let this be a lesson to those who yesterday said, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

• “As a Guuji, there’s one thing I know very well: People believe whatever they want to believe. Some things you do not see, simply because you do not wish to look. And so… it falls to me to place the truth before your eyes, in all its ugliness.”

• “There are no coincidences in the world. Everything is the fruit of seeds planted long ago.Just like your appearance in that tavern.Time is just waiting for those seeds to sprout”.

• “I’m all for work-life balance, but I think this is pushing it.”

• “For those that live too long, the friends of days gone by and scenes from their adventures live on in their memories. As such i have no regrets in meeting you, friend. Should the day ever come that we are not together, you will continue to shine like gold in my memories.”

• “You stand upon your tomb, though you know it not! ”

• “When shall we meet again after this parting? For life is like the morning dew.”

• “What is more pure and free than than wish of a child?”

• “No matter what the days may bring,whichever roads we choose to take.While this oath remains observed,each of us remains the same…”

• “One is simply not partial to the tedium of social interaction, and wished to find some peace and quiet.”

• “Even I cannot avoid it. But there is something I understand better than most: When the door opens, it is time to leave. The greater the power, the greater the danger erosion may bring about. The millennia may come and go, but even a stone may tire.”

• “People who look for the flaws in others, expose theirs quickes”

• “Because maybe it doesn’t matter so much if something’s real or not. Maybe magic and awesomeness are what make something worth believing. Why should someone else get to take that away from you?”

• “Cast your fear of injury by the wayside and fight with all your might. I too did this during the Archon war”

• “If saving you is a sin, I’ll gladly become a sinner”

• “To be alive is to seek, to set foot in every place that eye can see.”

• “In teyvat, the stars in the sky will always have a place for you”

• “Someday even bedrock returns to dust”

• “For dawn to come, there must be those willing to pierce the darkness with their light.”

• “When one’s fervent ambition burns brightly, the gods will cast their gaze upon you. Some ambitions have the power to heal wounds. to bring victory. to inspire hope. But some ambitions outlive their masters, long after the soul ascends. They remain as they were in the beginning. Burning bright and true for all eternity.”

• “A blade embraces it’s duty, as a jeweller cherished their gems”

• “A non-believer going into a church never ends well”

• “You’ve been with me for some time now. Have you learned to observe? Then observe me. Observe me right down to my very core.”

• “Hard work is all there is to the craft”

• “People show you whatever side of themselves they want you to see.”

• “I hear the voice of fate, speaking my name in humble supplication…”

• “Gamblers always place their bets on the next dice roll… But the bankers always have the last laugh, and they never touch a single die.”

• “Before demanding too many miracles from the gods, first consider if you are willing to pay the price they ask”

• “This scenery is wonderful… Surely enough to convince anyone to become a wanderer.”

• “My memory has all but faded completely… but I will always remember how she too, loved these flowers”

• “To be blind to the beauty that poets adore is to view the world from the ocean floor.”

• “The Crash of a Spear brought billowing dust. The mountains and waters made way at the sound. The sight of a dragon bestowed with a touch. The promise of rainwater blessing the ground.”

• “If only you could make one exception…things could have been easier for you.”

• “A foolish man complains of a hole in his pocket, I wise man uses it to scratch his balls.”

• “For how could a god, who never once resisted, even till the end, nurse hatred for her people in her heart?”

• “Sorry to also have you shoulder the grievances of the world, since you could endure my bitter cold, you must have desire to burn?”

• “The power of water is its ability to take any shape.”

• “And thus another spark of divinity departs from Liyue. My legacy shall now be left for those who come after to debate.”

• “The fate that brings people together is not a cord so easily cut.”

• “He” is unhappy. “He” is displeased with the disturbance caused by “words of the tone,” which drown out the wisdom of the “words of the heart”. The “words of the tongue” are like pouring rain. They shake the eardrums and disrupt the heart. “The words of the heart” are like fog. They deep in naturally, enshrouding.. do not use your tongue do not use your ears, listen with your heart”.”

• “There are so many disappointments to face. Some are huge, some are small, some are what they are. Some are deep wounds that change the course of your life. They become the scar that everyone sees, no matter how much you try to hide it. Some are so small, there’s no understanding why we give them any time at all, but we keep giving them center stage. Some are disappointing. We accept them for what they are and hope good comes out it. Once the ice cream hits the pavement, all we can do is hope the ants enjoy the treat”

• “I have lived places where black lives didn’t matter. I have lived places where poor lives didn’t matter. I have lived places where military lives didn’t matter. Those places will never live in me.”

• “When a child is bored, read them a book about far away places. Plant a dream of a peace filled world”

• “I’m often asked how I did it, how I got through the hard times. I wish there was a check list of things to help others get through their darkness, but there’s not. Sometimes you have to shuffle your feet to keep your balance. Sometimes you have to take bold steps to get over a crevasse. Sometimes you just have to stand still and let the raging water pass in front of you. There’s not a right answer, or even one answer. Just keep moving forward to find your light.”

• “Darkness may not always be evident, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there. But there is, also, still hope to shed light on those places.”

• “Impatient with actions, Patience with results.”

• “Past meets present, heritage becomes legacy, long into the future may we thrive.”

• “Aranishat, you should admit defeat. Don’t be like a stubborn twig that refuses to bend against strong gusts. You will break just like it.”

• “The unseen and uncatchable that slips past the moon’s gaze and encourages the growth of sprouts”

• “Hmm, the children of the forest aren’t distinguished by age.”

• “Zhongli: I ended an era with my own two hands. I have always wondered how I should… remember that which I ended. Zhongli: History records, but history may be changed. This incident proved that. Time is a mighty force, and histories twist in its flow… Zhongli: I need to find a better way of recording history in order to engrave its truth. Zhongli: Stone carvings were one such ancient method. But unchanging stone, immovable earth, even one such as myself… Someday, we may all disappear. Paimon: Zhongli… Zhongli: Therefore, I thought of you, Traveler. Zhongli: You are one who crosses the celestial atlas, and who passes through countless worlds. If our history is engraved in your memory, it will one day accompany you into another world. Zhongli: As long as a Traveler like you is able to record what happened, then a backup of sorts will exist for times and tides of Teyvat.”

• “Life may exist in all kinds of unfathomable forms and in all manner of unthinkable environments. Mysterious, yet tenacious… Perhaps this is what makes life so special.”

• “To those who seek shall just reward be given in proportion to their wisdom and work.”

• “Yae Miko: The path of the swordmaster is filled with twists and turns. It is no small undertaking to pursue the position of greatest swordmaster in the world. Yae Miko: It requires one to take their sword firmly in both hands and cut down the hopes and dreams of others… even those of one’s closest companions. Yae Miko: Only a deep commitment to his ambition to become the best made it possible for him to rise above the pain of these encounters — to focus on the way ahead. Yae Miko: When that ambition disappeared, he began to doubt himself. As he battled his growing anxiety… he slowly descended into the state you see him in now.”

• “The wind that blows from afar carries fresh life to these shores…”

• “How else can you catch a thief except by being familiar with how a thief thieves?”

• “Only those who have traveled understand the meaning of a journey. I hope she’ll find what she’s been looking for…”

• “The essence of the Amenoma Art is to have the patience to move mountains and unrelenting willpower”

• “Then again, the memories of ore can shift with the passage of time and the changing of the environment”

• “He who bears the weight of memory is destined to shoulder the burden of truth. As it ought to be.”

• “In the wilderness, snow falls on a spring day. In an instant it will melt. Even where it is fleeting and leaves no trace. Even where it will never fall again…”

• ” Kun Jun: Curious how swords and daggers are blind, yet their creators see so much. Perhaps empathy is mankind’s proudest achievement after all? Zhongli: Azhdaha. I am no longer the Geo Archon. Kun Jun: …I can sense it. Zhongli: Today I am just an ordinary citizen of Liyue. Kun Jun: Even you met such a fate… Let’s get the difficult part out of the way. I cannot guarantee that I won’t be awoken a second time. Zhongli: No matter. If that day comes to pass, Liyue must prepare itself to face you. Kun Jun: And how will Liyue fare without Rex Lapis? Zhongli: Even without a god above, this remains a nation of men. I was once their god, I ought to be here to witness their rise and fall. Kun Jun: All life is shaped and then ground away by the endless flow of time. You were always the strongest among us, yet it would seem that even you have been eroded… Kun Jun: That’s unimportant… fate is ordained by heaven. Even if our mission had already concluded, it would be cowardly not to strike out on the road of departure. Kun Jun: You may live forever, doomed to a lonely existence… yet even this is temporary. When you reach the end of time, those people, those past and future relationships predetermined by fate… They will be waiting for you. Zhongli: I do not pretend to match your rhetoric when it comes to the subject of a life long-lived. I fear that the life of an elemental being is longer than any in this world.”

• “The greater the power, the greater the danger erosion may bring about. The millennia may come and go, but even a stone may tire.”

• “But as long as you firmly believe that you are on the right path… everything has meaning.”

• “A fleeting moment, a thousand years in the mortal world. The rocks feel it, and so too does the earth and the god”

• “Nachtigal: I think you’re being too stubborn. There’s always a choice in life. Nachtigal: I mean, just look at Bonifaz and I. We weren’t born as traveling merchants, and no one in our families has even been to Sumeru… Nachtigal: But we’re still here with the northern wind at our backs. We don’t regret our choice at all. Seeing the boundless world unfold before our eyes fills us with a sense of freedom.”

• “The desert holds only the past. It has no future. If what lies beneath the sand and wind can be described as the truth, then I can only say that it perhaps isn’t something that will bring joy to everyone.”

• “Venti: “Fill up the barrels and store them away, Then wait, wait for a windier day. Wax the bottles, seal them tight, For the south wind that soothes, for the north wind that bites.” “How does this fine wine taste to the tongue? As ‘Mondstadt’ to the ear: like a sweet dream of freedom. And what are the fruits that went into the brew? An explorer’s courage, a love tender and true.” “A defender’s will, strong as yesteryear, Joining the thousand winds in a song of good cheer, Turning sour into sweet, bitter notes fade away, As we wait, wait for a windier day.” “Pray tell, what treasure does this barrel hold? ‘Tis wheat’s greatest triumph, the true liquid gold. As it flows from the keg, what sound drifts by? Wind chimes in the boundless, immemorial sky.” “We raise up our glasses, and voices in song, As we wait, wait for the wind to sing along. Where do we turn once the thousand winds take flight? To the tales of the lyre, to the sweet dream of tonight.”

• “You know, no two waves are ever the same…”

• “The sun nurtures many good things, but it can’t do anything about the problems lurking in the shadows.”

• “The ancient writers once emphasized the virtues of “edification through immersion” — that is to say that human temperament and character can be affected by being steeped in aromas and lovely scents.”

• “Dear young master, you still have a long life ahead of you. There shall be plenty of opportunities to drink — in the future, that is.”

• “The flesh resides in society, while the heart yearns for the natural world… Such has been the way of the Kaedeharas for many generations.”

• “To me, what is past is gone. Everything in the world is guided by its own rules, and as for people… we can never relive the past.”

• “If you ever grow tired of this tedious life, just drop everything and go off on a journey, see the world. Remember, Kazuha, don’t let yourself get tied down in life.”

• “I yearn to hear the song of nightingale, my patient ears ready to attend. A veil of mist obscures the western skies, into its midst a silver moon descends.”

• “Life is a long journey, and that’s why I must travel far and wide.”

• “Ambition is our power in its rawest form. We cannot live without it.”

• “Old things often carry around some form of regret.”

• “But that’s okay. Partings produce reunions, if not at home then in a distant land.”

• “When the heart is clear, the world is too. And when the heart is unladen, the same is true.”

• “Only when you witness my whole story does it become truly consigned to history.”

• “What really matters in life is not how strict we are with ourselves, but the connections we make along the way. There’s no future for those who linger on the past.”

• “I often travel during storms Which means my eyes are often blinded by the rain Many times, I couldn’t even see what was right in front of me One day, I finally reached the top of the mountain I looked out with the clouds beneath my feet And only the gentle breeze murmuring in my ears The highest mountain is a clear and enlightened heart Here, there is no self, no hatred, no regrets, and no desires Let’s embark on a journey, for I am the breeze We will meet again, no matter how far along the road Life has just begun, and maybe the whole world can be my home”

• “I wander like the autumn leaves that float to the mountains and seas afar.”

• “If an astrologist thinks that their arts can solve all problems, they will be forsaken by the starry ether. Mona: Their divinations will lose the power to guide, and will not be able to pierce the fog of the unknown before them. Principles are principles.”

• “Haste is indeed a normal part of life, yes… but as we often put it, even a raging river must sometimes flow peacefully through a serene stream.”

• “The forest will remember. No good thing will ever fade away, and all suffering will come to nourish something beautiful…”

• “The battlefield is a treacherous place. Every opportunity you take, you put everything on the line for. If you fear sacrifice and failure, you can never be victorious.”

• “Ningguang: Breakfast sets the tone for the rest of the day. You can’t compromise on it. Ningguang: If you wake up to the same monotonous meal each day, you will start to feel fatigued even before you start working.”

• “Times flies and the good years slip away easily.”

• “Sorry, sorry! It’s just that good conversation can be as fleeting as fireworks, sometimes, you know? So when I’m in the mood and I’ve got a lot to say, I just have to get it all out there in one go and leave no regrets!”

• “Yeah, no matter how close you and your friends are, there’s always going to be some distance after being separated for a long time. But as soon as the fireworks lit up the sky, it’d instantly take us right back to our childhood, and we’d be chatting away like in the old days.”

• “Raiden Shogun: My form is a symbol of supreme majesty, in which has been vested power over all the realm. It is the cohesive embodiment of all that constitutes the “Raiden Shogun.” Raiden Shogun: It inherits Ei’s pain — the pain of inevitable loss that comes as she moves forward. So too does it inherit her determination to reach eternity. Raiden Shogun: Every action undertaken is for the sake of resisting erosion. Raiden Shogun: Determination, courage, love, hatred… All of these will be degraded and distorted by the incessant flow of time. Raiden Shogun: Only rules shall remain constant for eternity.”

• “Change will come to Inazuma, and with it, new possibilities. This will take time, but eventually, the future will bring healing to the scars of the past.”

• “The people’s sacrifice has always caused me immense pain, but in dwelling on the tragedy, I overlooked their splendor… The grief blinded me to how brightly they shone in their final moments.”

• “Jean: Don’t worry about it too much. The more flustered you become, the less likely you are to find it. Jean: Pay attention to what you see in your peripheral vision, and you might just stumble upon what you’re looking for.”

• “Stop cooping yourself up in your cabin. Get some of that sea breeze, it’ll do you some good.”

• “When people see the object of their dreams, how many are really able to control their desire and follow the contract…?”

• “Drifting seeds are destined to flourish on nice soil… same for Nara! One day, the wind in Nara’s hearts will stop, halting their steps.”

• “Don’t worry, no memories will be lost! The forest will remember, just like the rivers emptying into the sea, before being turned into the rain splashing down unto the earth.”

• “The adepti leave the human world, find somewhere to go be a hermit, and then they research and invent all these amazing things…”

• “Yep! Work hard, play hard, and rest even harder. The two of you may need even more rest than you’d expect!”

• “Eternity stretches things out over a long time. But each moment within it becomes all the more fragile.”

• “A glutton, this Paimon is. A bite on the mushroom today, another bite tomorrow, and a hundred days later, there shall be no Paimon left in Paimon, but only mushrooms.”

• “A helping hand must see things to the end.”

• “May no regrets linger in the night bygone. May all shadows fade ere the dawn to come.”

• “Xamaran: …Ignorance might be a blessing, and knowledge might bring forth calamity… Xamaran: …Only that which graced with the ambrosia of knowledge can flourish into the strong… Xamaran: …Only that which has been tested with the desolation of wandering can brave the wilderness…”

• “Faith doesn’t ask for anything in return though, does it?”

• “Dainsleif: It’s just my opinion, but a word of advice: Always be on your guard when around gods. Dainsleif: You shouldn’t place too much trust in them. But at the same time, don’t go too far in the opposite direction… Don’t go trying to overthrow them, or hunt them down.”

• “The ocean is good company… I hope we can all find some peace and happiness while we’re here.”

• “Reply: “Instant gratification has no place in the aesthetics of a wicked dragon! First comes expectation, and then comes patience! Once a dragon’s yearning for golden dreams has reached its peak…” Reply: “…Ah, then would the taste of those dreams not be splendid beyond compare?”

• ” Venti: It is people’s shared will that brings them onto the same page. And surely, it is the wind of freedom that brought us together. Venti: It comes from the end of the journey, the edge of the world, the depths of our heart. It is ceaseless.”

• “Who was it that stroked your bloodied, determined visage By stream flowing small By boulder standing large” Venti: “Who was it that embraced your weary yet noble soul In dreams deep In skies soaring” Venti: “Dear friend I am leading you by the hand Into the night where lanterns shine bright” Venti: To tell you a tale of freedom and dreams The tale of where this festival begins”

• “Those who live by the sword know to listen to the voice of their blade. …Hehe, she’s nagging me to get on with it again.”

• “Warriors make friends best when their swords clash, rather than when they talk around a table.”

• “Truly fascinating. The harder they try to silence the situation, the greater the chaos that erupts…”

• “Pale flame, lay waste to this frozen shell and witness my suffering. In fires of sin and retribution, your soul will be incinerated!”

• “In the world of researchers, there’s nothing more painful than writing a paper. If there is, it’ll be getting stuck writing a paper.”

• “But as a wandering samurai, I find meaning in traveling and the sprawling beauty of nature that lies along the way, while still retaining the “warrior way” in my heart.”

• “The part of your journey that lies after the storm may well prove to be the most arduous.”

• “Arana: Arana made little Nara sleep and dream, then removed the bad stuff in their dreams. So when they grow, just like saplings growing into big trees, they won’t become bad. Arana: Otherwise, little Nara would be afraid. If always afraid, they would believe in the power of “fear,” and grow up to be scary bad Nara.”

• “The forest will remember. No good thing ever fades away. All pains will become the nourishment of something beautiful…”

• “Press forward and sing, even if the path is filled with flame…”

• “There are those who no longer dream and thus can no longer see us, those who have accepted fate and stopped searching for the way forward, and those who wallow in fear and pain. Their hearts have hardened, unable to get help from these flowers.”

• “Arama: The vegetation that once covered it had all died and been reduced to grains of sand. Just as Marana whispered: All good things must vanish. Arama: But you should know that as dark as night is, the stars still shine and the sun will still rise. Death longs to dominate all, but life will not fade. Arama: Just like the yellow leaves that fall down shall nourish Cuihua Trees, their fruits shall sustain Sumpter Beasts, foxes, and forest boars, while they shall feed Rishboland Tigers in turn. And so, the forest always teems with life. Arama: Once, the land wat status s polluted with toxic blood. Like Nara, Aranara too thought that was the end of the world, but now even the memory of it is gone. The forest is even more luxuriant than it was in the time of Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. Arama: In the end, all that remains is beautiful. Those who part will come to meet again in Sarva. Arama: One day, our dreams and memories will intertwine and blossom on the numberless branches in Sarva. Wouldn’t that be great?”

• “I believe in you. Like the clouds know they have to release rain, the rain knows that it must fall onto the ground. Meeting all of you made me realize… that the time has finally come. I’m very happy.”

• “Alhaitham: The Akademiya firmly believes that all human actions can be explained through logic. Alhaitham: By sorting and analyzing entered data, the Akasha can derive behavioral logic, and predict the actions of those who fit an existing logic model. Alhaitham: However, at the risk of sounding like an advocate for fallacies, can everyone truly be considered “logical” at all times? Alhaitham: Emotions are a part of our behavioral logic. But can you guarantee that every experience of the same joy or pain would be equally intense? How can our feelings and opinions be predictable down to the letter in every single instance?”

• “But this also shows that humanity’s worship of gods is a combination of blasphemy and exaltation. It’s truly laughable.”

• “Just think about a sheet of paper… By itself, it holds no meaning. The content recorded on it is what gives it value.”

• “Humans are a species that can only find bliss in ignorance.”

• “That is the so-called “pride” of a scholar. If someone questions their academic facility, they will instantly feign understanding to keep up appearances.”

• “You all can only see the world in your mind, the one you think you know.”

• “Nahida: To me, everything we perceive in this world, everything we learn, and everything that happens to us is considered knowledge. Nahida: And if it’s a form of knowledge, then it can be understood. Nahida: However, only fate is about that which has yet to occur, so it has always drawn my curiosity. Nahida: So to me, “fate” is the ultimate knowledge. Nahida: That’s also why I love observing humans and all the things that happen to them. It all brings me great satisfaction. Nahida: And now, at long last, I’m not just an observer anymore. Nahida: I will personally experience my own fate, with you by my side. Hehe, isn’t this such a wonderfully exciting thing?”

• “Don’t worry. The growth of wisdom is like that of a plant — you only need to wait quietly for the flower to bloom.”

• “We all nestle under the great tree of wisdom, peering out to perceive the world. From the earth, and from the rain, we perceive its wonders until we become a white bird to perch atop a branch… And finally snap off the most important leaf. Once upon a time, I alone dreamed in this world. In my dreams, everybody would also dream after they fell asleep. Wild and wonderful thoughts would emerge from their minds. Some tumbled to the ground, and others floated to the sky. Connecting all things in the world into one dazzling net. Amongst the plethora of worlds were numerous smaller worlds. All of fate finding within the tapestry their brilliant glow. I gradually understood that these indescribable and constantly changing things Are the most profound things in the world. Only they can completely repel the madness. Only dreams can awaken consciousness from the deepest darkness. I’m the one who posed this question, yet also the one who sought a solution Saving the world with the dreams of the people used to be my answer. And now you’ve also found your own answer. And I shall return all the dreams to the people. Goodbye, people of Sumeru. May you be blessed tonight with the sweetest of dreams.”

• “As a scholar, I respect all possibilities. This has always been my principle and is an essential trait as an experimenter.”

• “The stars have always guided caravans, thieves, soldiers, and travelers who get lost in the night. They lead those in the dark out of trouble and back to safety.”

• ” Yae Miko: The bane of our existence: “writer’s block.” It’s your arch-nemesis for life, appearing without warning and inflicting a pain worse than death upon the writer. They sell their souls just to get their muse back. Paimon: Sounds awful. Yae Miko: When this happens, the best thing you can do is have a bite to eat and take a proper break.”

• “Sigh. I learned most of my socializing from books that were beyond my grade level and as a result had difficulty connecting with my peers.”

• “Yeah autism makes me not know how to respond to social prompts and adhd quickly makes connections out of things so I usually respond with something witty or funny or fun because of it.”

• “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

• “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”

• “If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.”

• “There are only two industries that call their customers users - illegal drugs and software”

• “Researchers are like children, always re-discovering things that are already known and make a big deal out of it.”

• “Are you the kind of guy who is so hung up on being nice he never really thinks about other people”

• “Like did you ever tell anyone how you felt did you ever ask them not to do something did you explain what was wrong and try to help resolve it? No offense but it kind of seems like you always just expected people to know how you felt and to treat you right just because you were nice. Another brief pause filled the space between them I mean I just don’t like arguing or being mean or confrontational for no reason especially when people should kind of already know what’s right. Yeah but how does anyone know of a problem if the problem is hidden from them and why would anyone want to solve it if it benefits them and the other person doesn’t seem to care. I don’t think niceness is always kind because kindness is not quietness, submissiveness or self-surrender. I think it’s the willingness to confront and deal with others and issues honestly and fairly for everyone’s benefit even when it’s difficult or uncomfortable for you”

• “To be autistic with ADHD is a huge contradiction. What one part of me wants the other cannot bear. Solitude, separation, quiet and stability, community, connection, busyness, and change. I have to try to find a way to balance the right amount of each or I’ll be on the path to falling apart again. ”

• “I don’t think niceness is always kind”

• “Enthusiasm can become self sabotage”

• “The only gods out here are the odds”

• “The muse is shy. She wants to be seen but not stared at. If you expect too much, its like a date and she just wont show up.”

• “It’s said that the gods favor fools as they were more entertaining to watch.”

• “You can’t spell self assurance without ass”

• “We give too much attention to the glorified few claiming what they’ve done have changed the world. There’s some truth to that. But there are many many others, quietly, doing their best in their capacity to make the world a better place, asking very little in return. So at this holiday season, I’d like to say

• thank you. When building a machine learning model, we can rely on a few strong features, but an ensemble of weak learners can be more performant and robust, but each one of them don’t necessarily get the credits they deserve.”

• “Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.”

• “Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.”

• “Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.”

• “A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.”

• “Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.

• “Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.”

• “Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.”

• “The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.”

• “Promptness is a sign of respect.”

• “To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.”

• “If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.”

• “Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.”

• “You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.”

• “Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.”

• “Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.”

• “For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.”

• “Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.”

• “On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.”

• “When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.”

• “Art is in what you leave out.”

• “Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.”

• “Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.”

• “The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.”

• “It’s not an apology if it comes with an excuse. It is not a compliment if it comes with a request”

• “Only imperfect beings can make art because art begins in what is broken.”

• “If someone is trying to convince you it’s not a pyramid scheme, it’s a pyramid scheme.”

• “The reward for good work is more work.”

• “The foundation of maturity: Just because it’s not your fault doesn’t mean it’s not your responsibility.”

• “You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”

• “The worst evils in history have always been committed by those who truly believed they were combating evil. Beware of combating evil.”

• “Don’t loan money to a friend unless you are ready to make it a gift”

• “If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.”

• “When playing Monopoly, spend all you have to buy, barter, or trade for the Orange properties. Don’t bother with Utilities.”

• “If you borrow something, try to return it in better shape than you received it. Clean it, sharpen it, fill it up”

• “To quiet a crowd or a drunk, just whisper.”

• “You are given the gift of life in order to discover what your gift in life is. You will complete your mission when you figure out what your mission is. This is not a paradox. This is the way.”

• “Don’t treat people as bad as they are. Treat them as good as you are.”

• “We are not bodies that temporarily have souls. We are souls that temporarily have bodies.”

• “If your goal does not have a schedule, it is a dream.”

• “The greatest breakthroughs are missed because they look like hard work.”

• “People can’t remember more than 3 points from a speech.”

• “Many backward steps are made by standing still.”

• “You don’t marry a person, you marry a family.”

• “When making something, always get a few extras — extra material, extra parts, extra space, extra finishes. The extras serve as backups for mistakes, reduce stress, and fill your inventory for the future. They are the cheapest insurance.”

• “To combat an adversary, become their friend.”

• “Take one simple thing — almost anything — but take it extremely seriously, as if it was the only thing in the world, or maybe the entire world is in it — and by taking it seriously you’ll light up the sky.”

• “Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another.”

• “Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind.”

• “This beginning with Audacity, or being thrown into the middle of it, is already a very great part of the art of painting.”

• “Painting a picture is like trying to fight a battle.”

• “Painting is the same kind of problem as unfolding a long, sustained interlocked argument… It is a proposition commanded by a single unity of conception.”

• “Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.”

• “We cannot aspire to masterpieces. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint-box. And for this Audacity is the only ticket.”

• “The profoundest eternal questions are met only with a boundless and eternal silence.”

• “These things happen, honey. I’ll tell you what I do. I have a little cry, then I pick myself up, dust myself off and keep going. The show must go on!”

• “When you try to be nice to everyone, you’re not being nice to anyone”

• “Zhongli was corroded by time. Pain and suffering he saw and maybe even did gave him wisdom. Cloud Retainer was most likely hardy and stubborn, but she too became corroded over time, becoming more like stone, not revealing how she feels to anyone. Madame Ping always tried to see the beauty in things and loved her ways. But over time she realized everything is beautiful in its own right. Her wisdom is that she learned to cherish every moment.”

• “We think of human life as like a lantern that’s lit one minute and extinguished the next.”

• “In the perpetual meantime of a sheltered eternity, most are content to live and not to dream. But in the hidden corners where the Gods’ gaze does not fall, there are those who dream of dreaming. Some say a few are chosen and the rest are dregs, but I say we humans have our humanity. We will defy this world with a power from beyond.”

• “Though flowers bloom yet always fade, but people go yet return another day. I just knew that you’d be back to see me before long, hehe.”

• “Truth be told, the older you get, the more time you have on your hands, and the more you start contemplating the past… I do wonder how my old friends back in the mountains are getting on..”

• “For us desert people, this is an inescapable fate. We come from the soil and return to the sand. It is a simple matter of being born and dying.”

• “Pitiful child… How can one envisage paradise’s shape without ever having feasted one’s eyes upon it?”

• “O stars high above the wasteland, O nightingales weary from the day, It’s time to take off your crowns of roses, Cleanse yourself with wine made from grapes. Sleep, sleep. The eternal oasis welcomes the lonely wanderer, And here the crisp springs flow, And the memories are forever sweet. Sleep, sleep. Yon golden slumber summons thee, wandering sand, Drink not that bitter salt water, For the sorrows of tomorrow have gone away.”

• “A little get-together between friends, sipping the finest tea, and watching lanterns float into the sky. Bidding farewell to the past, and embracing the present with joy.”

• “The same truth will sound different coming from different people. As more bear witness to a story, feelings and interpretations expand in variety too.”

• “Madame Ping: Times change, and the music enjoyed by the youngsters of today is, no doubt, very different from the tunes I was accustomed to in my youth. Nevertheless, all fine things in life can be appreciated.”

• “The sky you yearn for is yet another abyss”

• “Sometimes the only way to experience the beauty of things is to think of them in a beautiful way.”

• “Only when we hold our breath and try to keep all the oxygen in, do we suffocate.”

• “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.”

• “The truth doesn’t change according to your ability to stomach it.”

• “If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set”

• “Don’t aim for perfection. Start off slowly and discard just one item a day.” What lovely words to ease the hearts of those who lack confidence in their ability to tidy.”

• “Many people get the urge to clean up when under pressure, such as just before an exam. But this urge doesn’t occur because they want to clean their room. It occurs because they need to put “something else” in order. Their brain is actually clamoring to study, but when it notices the cluttered space, the focus switches to “I need to clean up my room.” The fact that the tidying urge rarely continues once the crisis is over proves my theory. Once the exam has ended, the passion poured into cleaning the previous night dissipates and life returns to normal. All thought of tidying is wiped from the person’s mind. Why? Because the problem faced—that is, the need to study for the exam—has been “tidied away.”

• “When a room becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical. Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder. The act of cluttering is really an instinctive reflex that draws our attention away from the heart of an issue.”

• “I have a habit of trying to categorize everything, probably because I have spent so much time pondering how to organize”

• “I came to the conclusion that it makes far more sense to categorize people by their actions rather than by some generalized personality trait.”

• “It’s easy to get rid of things when there is an obvious reason for doing so. It’s much more difficult when there is no compelling reason”

• “focusing solely on throwing things away can only bring unhappiness. Why? Because we should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”

• “Repetition and wasted effort can kill motivation, and therefore it must be avoided.”

• “The process of deciding what to keep and what to discard will go much more smoothly if you begin with items that are easier to make decisions about. As you gradually work toward the harder categories, you will be honing your decision-making skills. Clothes are the easiest because their rarity value is extremely low. Photographs and letters, on the other hand, not only have a high sentimental value but also are one of a kind; therefore, they should be left until last. This is true for photographs, in particular, because they tend to turn up at random while sorting through other categories and in the most unexpected places, such as between books and papers. The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos.”

• “There’s nothing wrong with tidying. However, it’s extremely stressful for parents to see what their children discard. The sheer volume of the pile can make parents anxious about whether their children can survive on what’s left. In addition, despite knowing that they should rejoice at their child’s independence and maturity, parents can find it very painful to see clothes, toys, and mementos from the past on the rubbish heap, especially if they are things they gave to their child. Keeping your garbage out of sight is considerate. It also protects your family from acquiring more than they need or can enjoy.”

• “The urge to point out someone else’s failure to tidy is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space.”

• “There are two reasons why younger sisters tend to collect clothes they don’t really like. One is that it’s hard to get rid of something received from family. The other is that they don’t really know what they like, which makes it hard to decide whether they should part with it. Because they receive so much clothing from others, they don’t really need to shop and therefore they have less opportunity to develop the instinct for what really inspires joy.”

• “You’re right. There is still a little kid inside me, trembling with anxiety, unable to be loved. And he is pleading with me not to ignore him anymore. All this time, I made myself too busy worrying about the opinions of others while suppressing the inner wound from the past. I need to believe that I am worthy of love for who I am.”

• “Even if you never achieve anything big and significant, to me, your existence alone is already enough.”

• “use them whenever you get the chance. Special moments are not separate from our everyday lives. When you make use of something special, it makes the moment special.”

• “People sometimes express their longing through hate.”

• “Lengthy deliberation often leads to a terrible decision.” If you think and worry too much before doing something, “your boat goes to the mountain instead of the ocean.” Now and then it is necessary”

• “Being alone makes the world pause for a moment and helps to restore harmony.”

• “When someone you love is in pain, the most meaningful gift you can give is your kind presence.”

• “We live longer now not because we do not get sick, but because we have learned to manage our illness.”

• “Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.”

• “The greatest gift that parents can give their child is to be happy themselves. If the parents are happy, then the child can grow up into a happy and confident adult. But if the parents are not happy, then the child can feel worthless— unable to make his parents happy no matter what. *”

• “Look back and see if you deluded yourself into believing that being obsessed with your children was a sacrifice. And consider whether your “sacrifice” did not rob your children of the opportunity to learn for themselves”

• “Children want to admire their parents. You won’t win their admiration by being overprotective.”

• “Do not lose your grip on the reins of your own life and allow yourself to be dragged around by someone else.”

• “If we combine painful memories, the need for attention, and pride, the relationship can easily be ruined.”

• “Love needs no reason other than love itself”

• “When your self-esteem hits rock bottom, say to yourself: “To my family and close friends, I’m just as precious as I’ve always been. I’m still capable of doing good in the world; a few people who don’t really know me don’t get to decide what I’m worth. In time, I believe I’ll meet different people who will value me and my abilities.”

• “Though it comes from a good place, doing what you think someone needs can be the seed of wanting to control them, to make them a certain way to please yourself.”

• “With a little planning, you can continue to enjoy your life while looking after someone close to you. Sacrificing yourself completely won’t be good in the long run,”

• “Change will last longer when it’s not forced but when it comes about because they have been convinced of its need.”

• “If we think of the child as a stranger, we focus on the inconvenience to ourselves, but if we think of the child as a family member, we become merciful,”

• “If you take home a cat and care for it, even one that’s been abandoned and is dirty, it won’t be long before it becomes the cutest cat in the world.”

• “MAYBE YOU’VE HEARD it said that each time someone embraces you warmly, your life is extended by one more day?”

• “Though I am lacking in many ways, I want to be a person who can bring some small comfort to people, who can give them courage, like a ray of warm sunshine. If there is someone who needs a hug from me, I will do it willingly, gladly, and as often as they need.”

• “Because I have experienced pain, I am able to embrace the pain of others. Because I have made mistakes, I am able to forgive others their mistakes. May my suffering become the seed of compassion”

• “There are those who love you for who you are, and there are those who love you for what you do. There is no change in the love of those who love you for who you are, even when you make a mistake or fail. Such people are your true friends and family.”

• “When someone is tired, bring them a cup of herbal tea and just leave them be.”

• “Words can become the seed of reality.”

• “To a student monk, books are like the bread we eat or the air we breathe.”

• “I wish to be generous to the younger generation like they were to me.”

• “Listening openly, patiently, and attentively is one of the most significant expressions of love.”

• “I think this has to do with the fact that we want someone to listen to what we have to say, even if that someone is the impersonal online world.”

• “Children are eager to show off their scars because they like to receive loving attention from others.”

• “When we think we already know someone, we stop making an effort to know them better. When we do not know someone, we make an effort to get to know them. Love is the state of not knowing, and of wanting to know more.”

• “I saw an advertisement saying, “People are like heaters.” Our presence can warm each other. May you be a heater for someone today.”

• “Big world, some weirdos!”

• “All that pointless anguish over such a simple task; I could have done it without getting so worked up.”

• “WHAT DISTRESSES US IS LESS the circumstances we find ourselves in and more the energy we expend in resisting them. Once we actually do the work, we are often surprised that it was not as hard as we imagined it to be. But when we resist, we become preoccupied by an endless cycle of negative thoughts, and in turn feel harried and stressed.”

• “A person’s behavior might not be motivated by any particular thought or feeling,”

• “In this fast-paced world, where so much gets done immediately, when you have to wait long enough for anticipation to build, the moment with that person will be very special.”

• “While love lets the other person be, obsession wants control.”

• “In other words, a feeling of disappointment is like a warning light, telling me that if I don’t do something about it, the relationship could fail.”

• “Mastering more skills means that you will have a smoother road than the others”

• “So, Lang Ga and Ge both agreed on the theory that you should keep it going even when being yelled at like hell. You should grasp the opportunity and try to learn as much as possible. It’s best to absorb all your master’s skills!”

• “When you want to learn things from someone, you must acquire many qualities, and having no sense of shame must be the most important quality of yours.”

• “Old Ke said that every stone had its own story, and even the most excellent stoneware crafter might not be able to understand all stones’ stories.”

• “After you catch something, you have to examine it first to see if it’s ill. For example, that animal we caught earlier had uncolored eyes and bald spots in his fur. If you cut it open, you would smell a funny smell from its meat. Even if the prey lived, it wouldn’t be alive for long. Any warrior would share its fate if he ate its meat.”

• “There was a saying, that the monkey reigns in the mountains when the tiger is absent.”

• “All earth returns to the mansion while all water belongs to the gully. Insects do not labor, by the blessing of nature……”

• “Altering people’s minds should always start with kids”

• “Shao Xuan had heard from someone that the earliest form of humans showing their feelings was through body movements and dancing gestures. Dance and moves were also a certain language of people expressing their passions and desires.”

• “They say that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains,”

• “One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,”

• “I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.”

• “It’s interesting how a random event can change our lives in ways that would be impossible to imagine, isn’t it?”

• “After Susie had been diagnosed, that excitement had dulled, but he’d soldiered on, somehow managing to continue to be all things to all people—to their daughter, to her, to the other kids and parents. The question of what he’d left for himself sometimes kept her awake at night.”

• “Sweet or not, it’s water from home”

• “When all phenomena are reduced to truth they follow a single pattern; Like the Tathagatha reaching nirvana under the two trees.”

• “If you try to ask about the dhyana Chapter 8 99 Journey to the West Or investigate the innumerable You will waste your life and achieve nothing.”

• “Polishing bricks to make mirrors, Or piling up snow to turn it into grain−− However many years have you wasted like that? A hair can contain an ocean, A mustard−seed can hold a mountain, And the golden Kasyapa only smiles. When you are awakened you will surpass the Ten Stages and the Three Vehicles, And stop the four kinds of birth and the six types of reincarnation.”

• “The meditating heart shines like the moon in a thousand rivers; The true nature embraces ten thousand miles of sky.”

• “If you want to have a future, don’t do anything with no future in it?”

• “Brother Li,” said Zhang Shao, “it seems to me that people who struggle for fame kill themselves for it; those who compete for profit die for it; those who accept honors sleep with a tiger in their arms; and those who receive imperial favours walk around with snakes in their sleeves. Taking all in all, we are much better off living free among our clear waters and blue hills: we delight in our poverty and follow our destinies.”

• “An axe well honed on rock is sharper than a spear.”

• “He who does good in secret can always prolong his life; Heaven looks after the one who asks no pity.”

• “There is an Indian story about a grain of salt that wanted to know just how salty the ocean is, so it jumped in and became one with the water of the ocean.”

• “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is like this, because that is like that.”

• “The wealth of one society is made of the poverty of the other.”

• “It was just a computer. If you didn’t keep that thought firmly in your mind it was too easy to start thinking of it as human, and that was the first step toward forgetting.”

• “He had created in passion, and passion isn’t sane. If it were, nobody would ever have children. After all, while the outcome of that passion might be the doctor who cures a dreaded disease, it might also be the tyrant who despoils a continent or the criminal who murders for pleasure. In the grip of that passion no one could know and few bothered to care. They cared only about the passion, were driven by it and it alone, and if it drove them to ruin it would not matter; they would follow it again, into death for themselves and everybody around them if that was where it led. Because passion isn’t sane.”

• “The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you’ll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain.”

• “The word God has become a closed concept. The moment the word is uttered, a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something.”

• “The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever- increasing fragmentation of the mind.”

• “A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.”

• “The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity the thinker. Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated”

• “One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.”

• “Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

• “Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.”

• “An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds unless there is enough presence in you.”

• “Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Because of its undifferentiated nature, it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness. It may be best to use a term that is as undifferentiated as that basic emotion and simply call it “pain.” One of the main tasks of the mind is to fight or remove that emotional pain, which is one of the reasons for its incessant activity, but all it can ever achieve is to cover it up temporarily. In fact, the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain. The mind can never find the solution, nor can it afford to allow you to find the solution, because it is itself an intrinsic part of the “problem.”

• “Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within. The very thing that gives you pleasure today will give you pain tomorrow, or it will leave you, so its absence will give you pain. And what is often referred to as love may be pleasurable and exciting for a while, but it is an addictive clinging, an extremely needy condition that can turn into its opposite at the flick of a switch.”

• “If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the worlds, that stories happen.”

• “I say “amateur” only because it was fashionable for wealthy men to refer to their passions in this dismissive way, with a little flick of their fingers, as if admitting to a profession other than moneymaking might sully their reputations.”

• “On the third day, my room became a cell, which became a cage, which became a coffin, and I discovered the very deepest fear that swam through my heart like eels in undersea caves: to be locked away, trapped and alone.”

• “His expression as he surveyed me made me think of old-timey illustrations of God: severely paternal, bestowing the kind of love that weighs and measures before it finds you worthy. His eyes were stones, pressing down. “You are going to mind your place and be a good girl.”

• “It’s stupid to think things like that. It just gives you this hollow, achy feeling between your ribs, like you’re homesick even though you’re already home, and you can’t read your magazine anymore because the words are all warped and watery-looking.”

• “Words and their meanings have weight in the world of matter, shaping and reshaping realities through a most ancient alchemy. Even my own writings—so damnably powerless—may have just enough power to reach the right person and to tell the right truth, and change the nature of things.”

• “Second, my long years of research have taught me that all stories, even the meanest folktales, matter. They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads that we may follow out of the labyrinth.”

• “You see, doors are many things: fissures and cracks, ways between, mysteries and borders. But more than anything else, doors are change. When things slip through them, no matter how small or brief, change trails them like porpoises following a ship’s wake. The change had already taken hold of Adelaide Lee, and she could not turn away.”

• “His books have been translated into 59 languages and published in 150 countries. He is also the recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, among them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum, France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur”

• “What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it”

• “Buying more had failed to make them happier. In fact, it was entrapping them, and they needed to find a new relationship to their possessions, usually by throwing most of them out.”

• “As the architect Pier Vittorio Aureli writes, the “less is more” attitude can be a form of capitalist exploitation, encouraging workers to produce more while getting by with less, creating more profit for their bosses at the cost of their own quality of life.”

• “I began thinking of this universal feeling as the longing for less. It’s an abstract, almost nostalgic desire, a pull toward a different, simpler world. Not past nor future, neither utopian nor dystopian, this more authentic world is always just beyond our current existence in a place we can never quite reach. Maybe the longing for less is the constant shadow of humanity’s self-doubt: What if we were better off without everything we’ve gained in modern society?”

• “The minimalist blogger Joshua Becker, an evangelical Christian and author of The More of Less, published in 2016, proposes Jesus as the original minimalist. When he instructed a rich man to “sell everything you own and give it away to the poor,” the commandment wasn’t about self-sacrifice, according to Becker. It meant that the rich man would be happier without the possessions, so giving them away was a net gain—a kind of minimalist prosperity gospel.”

• “Minimalism is thus a kind of last resort. When we can’t control our material security or life path, the only possibility left is to lower our expectations to the point where they’re easier to achieve, which could mean living in a train car, or a camper van.”

• “We like to think that we can do without, rough it to prove that we’re not so soft or bound to the past.”

• “That’s the whole meaning of life,9 isn’t it—just trying to find a place to put your stuff.”)”

• “Minimalism’s lack of a coherent history is in part due to its nature—it instinctively tends to erase its own background, as if starting anew in each iteration. If its practitioners admitted to being referential or reviving a past tradition, they wouldn’t seem so radically minimal after all.”

• “Material simplicity will thus likely be manifest in consumption styles that are less ascetic … and more aesthetic,” Elgin wrote—in other words, not Spartan but stylized.”

• “He predicted the social media era’s obsession with curated authenticity, the kind that we see displayed on Instagram accounts: “Each person will consider whether his or her level and pattern of consumption fits, with grace and integrity,”

• “We take pride in the small details that we have actually chosen from our limited options, which might make us feel better about not being able to change our circumstances as a whole.”

• “When workers are separated from the products of their labor and compensated by an hourly wage, they can’t find satisfaction in their jobs or the remainder of family life. Thus they turn to acquiring capital as the only form of self-fulfillment. We work only to accumulate stuff and in turn the accumulated stuff dominates us, further distancing us from non-commodified things like relationships, joy, and community.”

• “Labor “is therefore not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying needs external to it,”

• “The less you are,12 the less you express your own life, the more you have,” Marx argued, “the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being.”

• “Stuff is therefore the enemy of happiness, and not just because it’s crowding your apartment, but because it’s part of this larger alienating system.”

• “The need for simplicity, taken to an extreme, can wipe function away entirely.”

• “We’re taking advantage of a maximalist assemblage. Just because something looks simple doesn’t mean it is; the aesthetics of simplicity cloak artifice or even unsustainable excess.”

• “Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be. And this rips us apart inside.”

• “Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience.”

• “The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could”

• “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.”

• “And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering.”

• “But ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man’s sins”

• “When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And then they want the person to change.”

• “Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own”

• “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”

• “there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.”

• “The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

• “he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that”

• “He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of”

• “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,” said the old man, with a certain bitterness. “Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. But that’s the way it is.”

• “Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents”

• “and for gold and adventure—and for the Pyramids. The boy felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold him back except himself.”

• “Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.”

• “Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don’t forget the language of omens. And, above all, don’t forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion.”

• “You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.‘”

• “I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and”

• “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.‘”

• “A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep.”

• “I’m like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.”

• “He had learned that there were certain things one shouldn’t ask about, so as not to flee from one’s own Personal Legend”

• “This candy merchant isn’t making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper’s daughter. He’s doing it because it’s what he wants to do,”

• “But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”

• “He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

• “The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being, thought the boy.”

• “I’ve crossed these sands many times,” said one of the camel drivers one night.

• “But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.”

• “The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.”

• “We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”

• “Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive … and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us. But in the crystal shop you probably realized that even the glasses were collaborating in your success.”

• “Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.”

• “Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.”

• “If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.”

• “Until then, he had considered the omens to be things of this world. Like eating or sleeping, or like seeking love or finding a job. He had never thought of them in terms of a language used by God to indicate what he should do.”

• “Don’t be impatient,” he repeated to himself. “It’s like the camel driver said: ‘Eat when it’s time to eat. And move along when it’s time to move along.‘”

• “The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes.”

• “Isn’t wine prohibited here?” the boy asked “It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil,” said the alchemist. “It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.”

• “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense.”

• “Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die.”

• “You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love … the love that speaks the Language of the World.”

• “Men dream more about coming home than about leaving,”

• “what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only”

• “If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

• “There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

• “The desert will give you an understanding of the world; in fact, anything on the face of the earth will do that. You don’t even have to understand the desert: all you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation”

• “Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”

• “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked, when they had made camp that day. “Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”

• “My heart is a traitor,” the boy said to the alchemist, when they had paused to rest the horses. “It doesn’t want me to go on.” “That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally it’s afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”

• “Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?” “Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you’re thinking about life and about the world.”

• “You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

• “He lost his fear, and forgot about his need to go back to the oasis, because, one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. “Even though I complain sometimes,” it said, “it’s because I’m the heart of a person, and people’s hearts are that way. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.”

• “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

• “Every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart.

• “When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I’ve known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I’ve discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that”

• “Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. “Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them—the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

• “So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won’t be heard: we don’t want people to suffer because they don’t follow their hearts.” “Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.”

• “What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.‘”

• “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”

• “Does a man’s heart always help him?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Mostly just the hearts of those who are trying to realize their Personal Legends. But they do help children, drunkards, and the elderly, too.” “Does that mean that I’ll never run into danger?” “It means only that the heart does what it can,” the alchemist said.”

• “Trust in your heart, but never forget that you’re in the desert. When men are at war with one another, the Soul of the World can hear the screams of battle. No one fails to suffer the consequences of everything under the sun.”

• “And then there were the others, who were interested only in gold. They never found the secret. They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legends to fulfill. And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own.”

• “The sea has lived on in this shell, because that’s its Personal Legend. And it will never cease doing so until the desert is once again covered by water.”

• “Don’t give in to your fears,” said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice.

• “If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

• “If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

• “Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.”

• “What is love?” the desert asked. “Love is the falcon’s flight over your sands. Because for him, you are a green field, from which he always returns with game. He knows your rocks, your dunes, and your mountains, and you are generous to him.” “The falcon’s beak carries bits of me, myself,” the desert said. “For years, I care for his game, feeding it with the little water that I have, and then I show him where the game is. And, one day, as I enjoy the fact that his game thrives on my surface, the falcon dives out of the sky, and takes away what I’ve created.” “But that’s why you created the game in the first place,” the boy answered. “To nourish the falcon. And the falcon then nourishes man. And, eventually, man will nourish your sands, where the game will once again flourish. That’s how the world goes.” “So is that what love is?” “Yes, that’s what love is. It’s what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It’s what turns lead into gold, and makes the gold return to the earth.”

• “The wind has many names. In that part of the world, it was called the sirocco, because it brought moisture from the oceans to the east. In the distant land the boy came from, they called it the levanter, because they believed that it brought with it the sands of the desert, and the screams of the Moorish wars. Perhaps, in the places beyond the pastures where his sheep lived, men thought that the wind came from Andalusia. But, actually, the wind came from no place at all, nor did it go to any place; that’s why it was stronger than the desert. Someone might one day plant trees in the desert, and even raise sheep there, but never would they harness the wind.”

• “You can’t be the wind,” the wind said. “We’re two very different things.” “That’s not true,” the boy said. “I learned the alchemist’s secrets in my travels. I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul. I want to be like you, able to reach every corner of the world, cross the seas, blow away the sands that cover my treasure, and carry the voice of the woman I love.”

• “When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.”

• “This is why alchemy exists,” the boy said. “So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life. Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead; and then lead will have to turn itself into gold.”

• “That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

• “A current of love rushed from his heart, and the boy began to pray. It was a prayer that he had never said before, because it was a prayer without words or pleas. His prayer didn’t give thanks for his sheep having found new pastures; it didn’t ask that the boy be able to sell more crystal; and it didn’t beseech that the woman he had met continue to await his return. In the silence, the boy understood that the desert, the wind, and the sun were also trying to understand the signs written by the hand, and were seeking to follow their paths, and to understand what had been written on a single emerald. He saw that omens were scattered throughout the earth and in space, and that there was no reason or significance attached to their appearance; he could see that not the deserts, nor the winds, nor the sun, nor people knew why they had been created. But that the hand had a reason for all of this, and that only the hand could perform miracles, or transform the sea into a desert … or a man into the wind. Because only the hand understood that it was a larger design that had moved the universe to the point at which six days of creation had evolved into a Master Work. The boy reached through to the Soul of the World, and saw that it was a part of the Soul of God. And he saw that the Soul of God was his own soul. And that he, a boy, could perform miracles.”

• “But this payment goes well beyond my generosity,” the monk responded. “Don’t say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less the next time.”

• “Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

• “No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”

• “But here he was, at the point of finding his treasure, and he reminded himself that no project is completed until its objective has been achieved”

• “While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents’ wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person “for the rest of their lives,” to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying “No” or “It’s over,” to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn’t even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best. And so their identical days and nights passed, days and nights in which adventure was just a word in a book or an image on the television that was always on, and whenever a door opened, they would say: “I’m not interested. I’m not in the mood.”

• “We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge?”

• “After you have experienced something so unspeakable, how do you learn to trust yourself or anyone else again? Or, conversely, how can you surrender to an intimate relationship after you have been brutally violated?”

• “It’s hard enough to face the suffering that has been inflicted by others, but deep down many traumatized people are even more haunted by the shame they feel about what they themselves did or did not do under the circumstances. They despise themselves for how terrified, dependent, excited, or enraged they felt.”

• “Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word—all the things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities—it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships.”

• “Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”

• “After trauma the world becomes sharply divided between those who know and those who don’t.”

• “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.”

• “We have discovered that helping victims of trauma find the words to describe what has happened to them is profoundly meaningful, but usually it is not enough.”

• “For real change to take place, the body needs to learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.”

• “The greater the doubt, the greater the awakening; the smaller the doubt, the smaller the awakening. No doubt, no awakening.”

• “Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people “acknowledge, experience, and bear” the reality of life—with all its pleasures and heartbreak.”

• “Scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.”

• “At this point, just as with drug addiction, we start to crave the activity and experience withdrawal when it’s not available. In the long run people become more preoccupied with the pain of withdrawal than the activity itself”

• “We concluded that Beecher’s speculation that “strong emotions can block pain” was the result of the release of morphinelike substances manufactured in the brain. This suggested that for many traumatized people, reexposure to stress might provide a similar relief from anxiety.”

• “Manipulating a monkey into a lower position in the dominance hierarchy made his serotonin drop, while chemically enhancing”

• “The social environment interacts with brain chemistry. Manipulating a monkey into a lower position in the dominance hierarchy made his serotonin drop, while chemically enhancing serotonin elevated the rank of former subordinates.”

• “After conducting numerous studies of medications for PTSD, I have come to realize that psychiatric medications have a serious downside, as they may deflect attention from dealing with the underlying issues. The brain-disease model takes control over people’s fate out of their own hands and puts doctors and insurance companies in charge of fixing their problems.”

• “The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive.”

• “You must make her hell-bent on being with you. Remember, the easier something is to get, the less precious it will be in the end”

• “I just—’ The thing with mental turmoil is that so many things that make you feel better in the short term make you feel worse in the long term. You distract yourself,”

• “The thing with mental turmoil is that so many things that make you feel better in the short term make you feel worse in the long term. You distract yourself, when what you really need is to know yourself.”

• “In the early days of my first experience of panic the only things I had taken away were booze and cigarettes and strong coffees. Now, though, years later, I realised that a more general overload was the problem. A life overload.”

• “As Nicholas Kristof pointed out in a 2017 New York Times article, ‘if just about the worst thing that can happen is for a parent to lose a child, that’s about half as likely as it was in 1990.‘”

• “It sometimes feels as if we have temporarily solved the problem of scarcity and replaced it with the problem of excess.”

• “I want to know if one of the reasons I sometimes feel like I am on the brink of a breakdown is partly because the world sometimes seems on the brink of a breakdown.”

• “I am petrified of where my mind can go, because I know where it has already been.”

• “Anxiety, to quote the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, may be the ‘dizziness of freedom’, but all this freedom of choice really is a miracle.”

• “We don’t need another world. Everything we need is here, if we give up thinking we need everything.”

• “He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.‘”

• “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about killing than we know about living.‘”

• “Sex isn’t really what sells. What sells is fear.”

• “The news unconsciously mimics the way fear operates – focusing on the worst things, catastrophising, listening to an endless, repetitive stream of information on the same worrying topic. So, it can be hard to tell these days where your anxiety disorder ends and where actual news begins.”

• “We seldom realise, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.‘”

• “But this change – even within the last four millennia – is not a smooth, straight upward line. It is the kind of steepening curve that would intimidate a professional skateboarder. Change may be a constant, but the rate of change is not.”

• “Then there are other serious psychological concerns. To be constantly presenting ourselves, and packaging ourselves, like potatoes pretending to be crisps.”

• “So, modern life is, basically, slowly killing the planet. Small wonder that such toxic societies can damage us, too.”

• “The whole of consumerism is based on us wanting the next thing rather than the present thing we already have. This is an almost perfect recipe for unhappiness.”

• “To see the act of learning as something not for its own sake but because of what it will get you reduces the wonder of humanity.”

• “You will be happy when people like you. You will be happy when more people like you. You will be happy when everyone likes you. You will be happy when people dream of you.”

• “MAYBE HAPPINESS IS not about us, as individuals. Maybe it is not something that arrives into us. Maybe happiness is felt heading out, not in.”

• “People might be encouraged to feel inadequate, but they don’t have to, as soon as they realise that the feeling is separate from the thing they are worried about.”

• “Just as being overly anxious about money can paradoxically result in compulsive spending, so worrying about our bodies is no guarantee we’ll have better bodies.”

• “In some areas, in some kind of distorted idea of equality, we seem to be trying to make everyone equally anxious, rather than equally free.”

• “In nature,’ wrote Alice Walker, ‘nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.‘”

• “Why don’t you do what I do? Let it wash all over you. Allow yourself just to be as you are. Just be.”

• “Everybody dies,’ wrote Nora Ephron. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day.‘”

• “Reframe your idea of beauty. Be a rebel against marketing. Look forward to being the wise elder. Be the complex elegance of a melting candle. Be a map with 10,000 roads. Be the orange at sunset that outclasses the pink of sunrise. Be the self that dares to be true.”

• “No one has ever found a Neolithic cave painting of someone waking up stressed because they slept through their alarm and missed their nine o’clock management meeting.”

• “having access to information gives you one kind of freedom at the expense of another.”

• “When the ability to check something turns into the compulsion to do so, we often find ourselves craving the time before, when there was no ability to check in the first place.”

• “For instance, in 2016, physicists in Germany built a clock so accurate that it won’t lose or gain a second for 15 billion years. German physicists now have no excuse for being late for anything ever again.”

• “We are too aware of numerical time and not aware enough of natural time. People”

• “People for thousands of years may have woken up at seven in the morning. The difference with these last few centuries is that now we are waking up because it is seven in the morning.”

• “We often find ourselves wishing for more hours in the day, but that wouldn’t help anything. The problem, clearly, isn’t that we have a shortage of time. It’s more that we have an overload of everything else.”

• “We have multiplied everything, but we are still individual selves. There”

• “To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can’t. To not crave parallel lives. To find a smaller mathematics. To be a proud and singular one. An indivisible prime.”

• “The world’s brain is a common but fitting metaphor. We are the nerve cells of the world’s brain, transmitting ourselves to all the other nerve cells. Sending the overload back and forth. Overloaded neurons on a nervous planet. Ready to crash.”

• “And things are happening too quickly for us to take stock of it all. Certainly quicker than in Tolstoy’s time. All this falling out. All this information. All this technological connection. The world’s brain is a common but fitting metaphor. We are the nerve cells of the world’s brain, transmitting ourselves to all the other nerve cells. Sending the overload back and forth. Overloaded neurons on a nervous planet. Ready to crash.”

• “The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn’t understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.‘”

• “LIFE OVERLOAD IS a feeling that partly stems from how contracted and concentrated the world seems to have become. The human world has sped up and has effectively shrunk, too.”

• “The trouble is that if we are plugged in to a vast nervous system, our happiness – and misery – is more collective than ever. The group’s emotions become our own.”

• “The whole internet is one step removed from the physical world. The most powerful aspects of the internet are mirrors of the offline world, but replications of the external world aren’t the actual external world. It is the real internet, but that’s all it can be.”

• “Don’t be steered towards being a caricature of yourself.”

• “Be a mystery, not a demographic. Be someone a computer could never quite know. Keep empathy alive. Break patterns. Resist robotic tendencies. Stay human.”

• “I used to think social media was harmless. I used to think I was on it because I enjoyed it. But then I was still on it even when I wasn’t enjoying it. I remembered that feeling. It was the feeling you get at three in the morning in a bar after your friends have gone home.”

• “The internet age encourages choice and comparison, but don’t do this to yourself. ‘Comparison is the thief of joy,’ said Theodore Roosevelt. You are you. The past is the past. The only way to make a better life is from inside the present. To focus on regret does nothing but turn that very present into another thing you will wish you did differently. Accept your own reality. Be human enough to make mistakes. Be human enough not to dread the future. Be human enough to be, well, enough.”

• “Accepting where you are in life makes it so much easier to be happy for other people without feeling terrible about yourself.”

• “We would do well to remember that this feeling we have these days – that each year is worse than the one previously – is partly just that: a feeling. We are increasingly plugged in to the ongoing travesties and horrors of world news and so the effect is depressing. It’s a global sinking feeling. And the real worry is that all the increased fears we feel in themselves risk making the world worse.”

• “It is like someone who is ill with a compulsive disorder continually underlining their fears – staying indoors, or washing their hands 200 times a day. They are actually doing more to hurt themselves, in the name of protecting themselves. But this time the disorder isn’t individual. It is social. It is global.”

• “Shock may be an unpleasant thing for an individual or a society to experience, but it can be a useful political tool.”

• “Naomi Klein coined the term the ‘shock doctrine’ to describe the cynical tactic of systematically using ‘the public’s disorientation following a collective shock’ for corporate or political gain.”

• “We don’t go into a state of shock when something big and bad happens,’ she says. ‘It has to be something big and bad that we do not yet understand.‘”

• “I remember once, during depression, staring up at a clear sky of stars. The wonder of the universe. At the bottom of the pit, I always had to force myself to find the beauty, the goodness, the love, however hard it was. It was hard to do. But I had to try. Change doesn’t just happen by focusing on the place you want to escape. It happens by focusing on where you want to reach. Boost the good guys, don’t just knock the bad guys. Find the hope that is already here and help it grow.”

• “The medium isn’t just the message, it’s the emotional intensity of that message.”

• “Realise the world is not as violent as it feels. Many writers on this subject – such as the famed cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker – have pointed out that, despite all its horrors, society is less violent than it used to be.”

• “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.‘”

• “Cynicism was a luxury for the non-suicidal.”

• “One thing mental illness taught me is that progress is a matter of acceptance. Only by accepting a situation can you change it. You have to learn not to be shocked by the shock. Not to be in a state of panic about the panic. To change what you can change and not get frustrated by what you can’t.”

• “There is no panacea, or utopia, there is just love and kindness and trying, amid the chaos, to make things better where we can. And to keep our minds wide, wide open in a world that often wants to close them.”

• “sleep has traditionally been an enemy of consumerism. We can’t shop in our sleep. We can’t work or earn or post to Instagram in our sleep. Very few companies – beyond bed manufacturers and duvet sellers and makers of black-out blinds – have actually made money from our sleep.”

• “And now, at this later stage of capitalism, sleep has become seen not just as something that slows work down, but as an actual business rival. The chief executive of Netflix, Reed Hastings,”

• “We live in 24-hour societies but not 24-hour bodies.”

• “EVEN WHEN THE world is not overtly terrifying us, the speed and pace and distraction of modern existence can be a kind of mental assault that is hard to identify. Sometimes life just seems too complicated, too dehumanising, and we lose sight of what matters.”

• “Accentuating the things that make you feel good, cutting back the things that make you feel bad, and letting people feel truly connected to the world around them.”

• “That is the biggest paradox, I think, about the modern world. We are all connected to each other but we often feel shut out.”

• “Because often identifying a problem, being mindful of it, becomes the solution itself.”

• “individualism has replaced collectivism and community. We have face-to-face conversations less and less, and more interactions with avatars.”

• “The more stimulation we have, the easier it is to feel bored.”

• “She thought the cure to misery was to ‘decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone’.”

• “1.Don’t feel you always have to be there. In the not-so olden days of letters and landlines, contacting someone was slow and unreliable and an effort. In the age of WhatsApp and Messenger it’s free and easy and instant. The flipside of this ease is that we are expected to be there. To pick up the phone. To get back to the text. To answer the email. To update our social media. But we can choose not to feel that obligation. We can sometimes just let them wait. We can risk our social media getting stale.”

• “There is no final checking of your phone. Think of all the times you checked your phone yesterday. Did you really need to so often?”

• “Because there is no end to the uncertainty. There is no final checking of your phone.”

• “Illness has a lot to teach wellness.”

• “When it comes to our minds, awareness is very often the solution itself.”

• “This was an already familiar tactic of mine: trying to distract myself from one torment by finding another.”

• “In a world of a million distractions you are still left with only one mind.”

• “I SO WISH I could explain something to my younger self. I wish I could tell myself that it wasn’t all me. I wish I could say that there were things I could do. Because my anxiety, my depression, wasn’t just there. Illness, like injury, often has context.”

• “When I fall into a frantic or despairing state of mind, full of unwelcome thoughts that can’t slow down, it is often the result of a series, a sequence of things. When I do too much, think too much, absorb too much, eat too badly, sleep too little, work too hard, get too frazzled by life, there it is. A repetitive strain injury of the mind.”

• “6.Don’t grab life by the throat. ‘Life should be touched, not strangled,’”

• “save lives. But, as C.S. Lewis once put it, ‘The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken”.‘”

• “this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try and become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is a fantasy, in which you will certainly perish.‘”

• “Because there is, I suppose, a clear self doing the asking. But when I was ill these weren’t simply abstract concerns. These were desperate mysteries to solve, as though my life depended on it. Because my life did depend on it. The feeling of me-ness had gone – it had been crowded out – and I felt like I could become trapped in the infinite I, silently floating in panic, with nowhere to land.”

• “Panic is there to help us. As it is for many other animals, panic is our mind and body telling us to do something. Fight or flight. Run from the predator or fight the predator.”

• “People who have never had a period of living with anxiety and panic don’t understand that the realness of you is an actual feeling that you can lose. People take it for granted. You don’t get up in the morning and think, as you spread peanut butter onto your toast, ‘Ah, good, my sense of self is still intact, and the world is still real, I can now get on with my day.’ It’s just there. Until it isn’t. Until you are in the cereal aisle, feeling inexplicable terror.”

• “Within a feeling of derealisation, I still knew I was me. I just didn’t feel I was me. It is a feeling of disintegration. Like a sand sculpture crumbling away. And there is a paradox about this sensation. Because it feels like both an extreme intensity of self and a nothingness of self. A feeling of no return, as if you have suddenly lost something that you didn’t know you had to look after, and that the thing you had to look after was you.”

• “And in unnatural settings, when your anxiety is raw enough, you can feel unnatural, too. You can feel as removed from yourself as a packet of toilet roll is removed from a tree.”

• “It helps to know I am just a caveman in a world that has arrived faster than our minds and bodies expected.”

• “Nothing I was worried about would fundamentally change anything. I would still be able to walk the dog. I would still be able to look at the sea. I would still be able to spend time with the people I love. The anxiety retreated, like a criminal under the spotlight of an investigation.”

• “Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.‘”

• “WE ARE BEING sold unhappiness, because unhappiness is where the money is. Much of what is sold to us is the idea that we could be better than who we are if we tried to become something else.”

• “Life isn’t a play. Don’t rehearse yourself. Be yourself.”

• “8.If you’re feeling bad about yourself, stay away from Instagram.”

• “9.Remember no one else is ever worried about what your face looks like.”

• “So we have to be careful of our wants and watch that they don’t cause too many holes inside us, otherwise happiness will drip through us like water through a leaky bucket. The moment we want is the moment we are dissatisfied. The more we want, the more we will drip ourselves away.”

• “I have learned that however strong the craving gets the guilt afterwards will be stronger.”

• “That’s the problem with mental illness. It’s easy not to judge people for having an illness; it’s a lot harder not to judge people for how the illness occasionally causes them to behave. Because people can’t see the reasons.”

• “An evening of heaven in a glass doesn’t outweigh a month of hell in a cage.”

• “If the whole planet is having a kind of collective breakdown, then unhealthy behaviour fits right in. When normality becomes madness, the only way to find sanity is by daring to be different. Or daring to be the you that exists beyond all the physical clutter and mind debris of modern existence.”

• “Even when the tide of society is pulling us in one direction it has to be possible – if that direction makes and keeps us unhappy – to learn how to swim another way. To swim towards the truth of ourselves, a truth our distractions might be hiding. Our very lives might depend on it.”

• “How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high-powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five? But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and a sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad. What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.‘”

• “I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.‘”

• “As our schoolchildren are also discovering, all this testing and evaluating makes us stress about the future rather than be comfortable with the present.”

• “Work culture can lead to low self-esteem. We are encouraged to believe that success is the result of hard work, that it is down to the individual. So, it is no surprise that when we feel as if we are failing – which is almost continually in an aspirational culture that thrives on raising the bar of our happiness – we take it personally. And think it is down to ourselves. We aren’t encouraged to see the context.”

• “We like to work. It gives us purpose. But work can also be bad for physical health.”

• “It is hard to challenge our cultural obsession with work. Politicians and business leaders keep up the idea of relentless work as a moral virtue. They talk with misty-eyed sentiment and a dose of sycophancy about ‘decent ordinary working people’ and ‘hard-working families’. We accept the five-day working week as if it was a law of nature. We are often made to feel guilty when we aren’t working. We say to ourselves, like Benjamin Franklin did, that ‘time is money’, forgetting that money is also luck. A lot of people who work very long hours have far less money than people who have never worked in their life.”

• “and if it is what we can do about it. How much pressure are we actually putting on ourselves, simply because the way we work makes us feel continually behind? Like life is a race that we are losing? And in our struggle to keep up we don’t dare to stop and think what might be good for us.”

• “Aim not to get more stuff done. Aim to have less stuff to do. Be a work minimalist. Minimalism is about doing more with less. So much of working life seems to be about doing less with more. Activity isn’t always the same as achievement.”

• “One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.‘”

• “Progress,’ wrote C.S. Lewis, ‘means getting nearer to the place you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.‘”

• “In a world that can get too much, a world where we are running out of mind space, fictional worlds are essential.”

• “For me, reading was never an antisocial activity. It was deeply social. It was the most profound kind of socialising there was. A deep connection to the imagination of another human being. A way to connect without the many filters society normally demands.”

• “Reading isn’t important because it helps to get you a job. It’s important because it gives you room to exist beyond the reality you’re given. It is how humans merge. How minds connect. Dreams. Empathy. Understanding. Escape. Reading is love in action.”

• “I used to want to lose myself in the most intense experiences, as if life was simply a tequila to be slammed. But most of life can’t be lived like this. To have a chance of lasting happiness, you have to calm down. You have to just be it as well as just do it.”

• “We crowd our lives with activity because in the West we often feel happiness and satisfaction are achieved by acquisition, by ‘seizing’ the day, or by going out and ‘grabbing’ life by the horns. We might sometimes do better to replace life as something to be grabbed at, or reached for, with something we already have. If we clear out the mental clutter we can surely enjoy it more.”

• “Even world news seemed like a background irrelevance when you were sitting in an intensive care unit hearing the wails of grief coming from beyond a thin hospital curtain as the patient in the next bed passes away.”

• “I am trying now, when my life gets too packed with unnecessary stressful junk, to remember that room in the hospital. Where patients were thankful just to look at the view out of a window. Some sunshine and sycamore trees. And where life, on its own, was everything.”

• “human to ask a turtle questions. So, when depression slugs over me I close my eyes and enter the bank of good days and think of sunshine and laughter and turtles. And I try to remember how possible the impossible can sometimes be.”

• “Anyway, if you really want to know, the advice I would give is stop it.’ ‘Stop what?’ ‘It. The rushing after nothing. Humans seem in such a rush to escape where they are. Why? Is it the air? Does it not hold you up well enough? Maybe you need more time in the sea. I would say: stop it. Don’t just take your time, be your time. Move fast or slow, but be aware you will always take yourself with you. Be happy to paddle in the water of existence.‘”

• “Look at my head. It’s tiny. My brain-to-body-mass ratio is embarrassing. But it doesn’t matter, you see. If you take life carefully, you can focus. You can be how you need to be. You can have an amphibious approach to life. You can be at one with the rhythms of the whole earth. The wet and the dry. You can tune in to the wind and the water. You can tune in to yourself. It’s rather wonderful, you know, being a turtle.’ ‘I”

• “When looking at the sky, all our 21st-century worries can be placed in their cosmic context. The sky is bigger than emails and deadlines and mortgages and internet trolls. It is bigger than our minds, and their illnesses. It is bigger than names and nations and dates and clocks. All of our earthly concerns are quite transient when compared to the sky. Through our lives, throughout every chapter of human history, the sky has always been the sky.”

• “The world affects us, but it isn’t quite us. There is a space inside us that is independent to what we see and where we are. This means we can feel pain amid external beauty and peace. But the flipside is that we can feel calm in a world of fear. We can cultivate a calmness inside us, one that lives and grows, and gets us through.”

• “The story is never just the words. It is also the reading of them. And that”

• “LIFE CAN SOMETIMES feel like an overproduced song, with a cacophony of a hundred instruments playing all at once. Sometimes the song sounds better stripped back to just a guitar and a voice. Sometimes, when a song has too much happening, it’s hard to hear the song at all. And like that overcrowded song we, too, can feel a bit lost.”

• “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.‘”

• “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.‘”

• “Don’t try to pin yourself down. Don’t try to understand, once and for all, who you are. As the philosopher Alan Watts said, ‘trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth’.”

• “There is no future. Planning for the future is just planning for another present in which you will be planning for the future.”

• “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.‘”

• “And I did, like lots of people, get happy, fleetingly, at each career goal I set myself, but my mind quickly got used to the previous achievement and found a new goal. So, the more I got, the more I needed to get in order to stay level.”

• “The more ‘success’ you get, the easier it is to be disappointed by not getting things. The only difference is that now no one feels sorry for you.”

• “Simplify your life. Take away what doesn’t need to be there.”

• “The thing is to free one’s self,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, struggling with the task. ‘To let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.‘”

• “Everything special about humans – our capacity for love and art and friendship and stories and all the rest – is not a product of modern life, it is a product of being a human. And so, while we can’t disentangle ourselves from the transient and frantic stress of modern life, we can place an ear next to our human self (or soul, if you’d rather) and listen to the quiet stillness of being. And realise that we don’t need to distract ourselves from ourselves. Everything we need is right here. Everything we are is enough. We don’t need the bigger boat to deal with the invisible sharks around us. We are the bigger boat. The brain, as Emily Dickinson put it, is bigger than the sky. And by noticing how modern life makes us feel, by allowing that reality and by being broad-minded enough to change when change is healthy, we can engage with this beautiful world without being worried it will steal who we are.”

• “For after all,’ wrote the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ‘the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain.‘”

• “overwhelm isn’t having too much to do; it’s not knowing where to start.”

• “Maybe you are like me—an overachiever, a people pleaser, a perfecter—so you believe success has been defined by what you do, not who you are. You fill your days in pursuit of this illusion of success, just as I did, but deep down you feel there must be a better way. And you are so right.”

• “we falsely believe that we need to be busy, that we are supposed to fill our days.”

• “When we try to do too much, we overfill our plates with a multitude of tiny tasks and chores. We check a hundred things off our to-do lists, but when we slip into bed at night and our heads hit the pillow, we think, Why didn’t I get more done?”

• “That’s why productivity may have failed you in the past—it’s the struggle to make your life fit the system when, in fact, it should be the system that fits your life. You can customize your productivity so that your life and your priorities are at the center.”

• “But too many of us tie our self-worth to our busyness. Stress and overwhelm are badges of honor declaring our worthiness. We falsely believe that if we are not busy, we are failing. In the pursuit of finding balance, we try to do everything, but the more we do, the less we succeed.”

• “Creating an extraordinary life for ourselves requires moving away from balance, because when we lean into a priority—when we give time to the most important things—we have to take that time away from something else. We cannot give equal time to all the tasks on our lists.”

• “In chasing this illusion of balance, we end up creating a life that feels busy—not meaningful. We have to be willing to go out of balance. We need to be willing not to do everything. That’s the real magic.”

• “Ask any kindergartner what they are good at, and you’ll need to sit through a laundry list of topics: art, running, painting, climbing trees, eating potato chips—seriously, five-year-olds think they are amazing at everything! But wait ten years and ask the very same child, and she’ll think of almost nothing; at best you’ll maybe hear one or two things she believes she excels in. What happens to us in this space of time? How do we lose our belief in ourselves? We’ve allowed the world to define us and reinforce these limiting beliefs, but it’s time to break through.”

• “Sometimes it’s just a limiting belief, the idea that you simply cannot do something, that restricts you.”

• “Too often we hand over the reins, allowing others to imprison us with their own agendas and urgent fires that need putting out. We think we don’t have control over how our day runs, but we do. We’ve simply forgotten that we have the ability to choose to spend time on our own priorities.”

• “It’s not reality that makes us feel stuck; it’s the lens we use to view the world. Maybe you are tired of trying because it feels like it just doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve felt this way too. There are times when we all just want to crawl back in bed and throw the covers over our heads because we are so overwhelmed with the chaotic rush of our days. We can lose sight of who we are deep inside and what is most important to us. We are so busy struggling and fighting to keep our heads above the proverbial water that we seem to forget we can choose to tread water for a moment. We can allow ourselves a deep breath and time to scan the horizon—we can choose to swim to calmer waters. When we gift ourselves with the ability to step back and choose, something powerful begins to happen. We strengthen our internal locus of control3. In other words, we remember we have the ability to influence our own destiny instead of allowing the current to push us wherever it wants. People with a strong internal locus of control believe they have the freedom and ability to make their own choices and determine what happens to them. Because of that, they are significantly happier and more motivated. Psychologists have found that an

• “internal locus of control has been linked with academic success … higher self-motivation and social maturity … lower incidences of stress and depression … and longer life span.” We want to strengthen our internal locus of control and begin to understand that we have choices. BUT I REALLY DON’T HAVE ANY CONTROL If you’re still saying, “That isn’t true for me; I don’t have any choices in my day.” I hear you. You have a strict boss, an overbearing family member, an overly regimented schedule, a special-needs child, or something similar. Right? I met Rhonda when I was speaking at a workshop event”

• “Are you choosing to spend your time being busy, or are you choosing to focus your day on what matters most?”

• “When I look at this limited time I have, it reminds me that we all have seasons we live through. Seasons when our lives are hard and seasons where life comes easy, but in the scheme of 100 years, those seasons are a mere fraction of the time we have.”

• “Seasons pass, life ebbs and flows, but our priorities are what anchor us.”

• “Your happiness isn’t defined by others, it is defined by you and the daily choices you make. Living a life centered on your priorities is making a choice to be happy, and it’s okay to choose happy.”

• “am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

• “When we live our life using our North Star, we take ownership of our legacy.”

• “If the mat was not straight, the Master would not sit.”

• “Still, its nature could be understood, and those who cared the most about it, and the life from which it was inseparable, understood it best”

• “Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet”

• “The essence of the principle of the Uncarved Block is that things in their original simplicity contain their own natural power, power that is easily spoiled and lost when that simplicity is changed.”

• “All that we are is a result of what we have thought.”

• “Nothing can prevent your picture from coming into concrete form except the same power which gave it birth—yourself.”

• “Whatever the mind … can conceive it can achieve.”

• “Inside relationships it’s important to first understand who’s coming into the relationship, and not just your partner. You need to understand yourself first.”

• “We’ve got a thousand different diagnoses and diseases out there. They’re just the weak link. They’re all the result of one thing: stress. If you put enough stress on the chain and you put enough stress on the system, then one of the links breaks.”

• “I always say that incurable means “curable from within.”

• “Man becomes what he thinks about.”

• “What you resist persists.”

• “So many times people say to me, “Well, James, I have to be informed.” Maybe you have to be informed, but you don’t have to be inundated.”

• “Energy flows where attention goes.”

• “The essence of this law is that you must think abundance; see abundance, feel abundance, believe abundance. Let no thought of limitation enter your mind.”

• “A person who sets his or her mind on the dark side of life, who lives over and over the misfortunes and disappointments of the past, prays for similar misfortunes and disappointments in the future. If you will see nothing but ill luck in the future, you are praying for such ill luck and will surely get it.”

• “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you are right.”

• “So your purpose is what you say it is. Your mission is the mission you give yourself. Your life will be what you create it as, and no one will stand in judgment of it, now or ever.”

• “can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. Sylvia Plath”

• “I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.”

• “Master, I understand that the body is the basis. A good body is like uncut jade, it can be cut into many good things. And a weak body is like impure jade, even with excellent craftsmanship, nothing good can come from it.‘”

• “If a craftsman is to do a good job, he shall need good tools.”

• “Meteors — even though their lives are short, they radiate the brightest lights. They are dazzling. As for human, not even a Xiantian expert can live longer than several hundred years. Instead of living my whole life in mediocrity, why don’t I learn from the meteors? In my limited life, I’ll burn my passion of life and stimulate the blood in my veins, making my life radiate the most dazzling light. Only in this way will I die with no regret.‘”

• “Generally, people who are alone are independent and self-reliant. This is because if a person is usually alone they will naturally ponder. Pondering about life, pondering about their own values, the more they ponder, the more thoroughly they can understand things.”

• “Perhaps I’ve been wrong since the beginning. A person can’t always live for other people. If I live like that, not only will I be tired, father will be put under great pressure as well”

• “Alright, living in the world, why do I have to be afraid of something? Moreover, I’ve been living the wrong way. I mustn’t live for other people. That kind of life has tired both me and father out. I must live for myself. Father, big brother, 2nd brother, I’ll pursue my own life!”

• “This is just like how watched flowers never bloom but an unattended willow grows.”

• “You have to be true to your feelings no matter what happens later. To survive in this world, you’ll have to restrain yourself on many occasions, but if you restrain yourself too much, something that makes you feel regretful for the rest of your life can happen. Remember … sometimes, you have to be true to yourself even if you’ll die from this.”

• “The weak let their ideals control their actions, but the strong control their ideals with their actions.’ If not for this saying supporting my inner world like a column at the bottom of my heart, perhaps … I would have collapsed long ago due to being unable to stand acting against my will.”

• “The outside world, we are looking at only a small part that interests us.”

• “The world we see is not the entire universe but a limited one that the mind cares about. However, to our minds, that small world is the entire universe. Our reality is not the infinitely stretching cosmos but the small part we choose to focus on. Reality exists because our minds exist. Without the mind, there would be no universe.”

• “But then I realize it isn’t the outside world that is a whirlwind; it is only my mind. The world has never complained about how busy it is”

• “We feel unhappy not just because something bad has happened, but also because of the swirling thoughts about what happened.”

• “Too many choices make people unhappy.”

• “Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

• “How could you forgive until you’re forgiven? Sparks fly upward, you’re learning the hustle You’re learning that everyone in a room is in love with their own tongue”

• “Still searching for trouble You wanted a tempt, but not a tempter Where’d they find you? Out looking for home that you don’t remember Where did youth go?”

• “Your twenties are for spending hours and hours pretending We have plans and we have places we should visit But everybody knows your twenties are for wasting time”

• “I don’t wanna take the world for granted While I’m still trying to understand it”

• “This world makes me dizzy, how’d we get so busy? No one tries to take the time it takes to turn your Love into a love or friends into a family”

• “Patience is fatal but pain is not weak”

• “Long nights to quiet my mind With empty conversations Destroyed the life in my eyes I swear I’m gonna change, yeah I won’t be a casualty A product of my agony Break my bloodline Feel the pain and then kill it twice I won’t be a casualty No, I won’t go down like that”

• “They say one is too many When enough is enough”

• “Manifestation isn’t about trying, it is about being. You don’t try to be what you want. You choose and embody immanently what it is you want to be.”

• “17, and we got a dream to have a family A house, and everything in between And then, oh, suddenly, we turned 23 And now we got pressure for taking our life more seriously”

• “Is anybody there? Does anybody care What I’m feeling? I wanna disappear So nobody can hear Me when I’m screamin’ ‘Cause I could use a hand sometimes Yeah, I could use a hand sometimes They say pain is an illusion This is just a bruise And you are just confused But I am only human I could use a hand sometimes I am only human”

• “Let’s make this fleeting moment last forever So, tell me what you’re waiting for? I’m gonna keep it frozen here forever There’s no regretting anymore It’s worth the wait, even so far away I’m making the night mine until the day I die No lights to brake when you’re hanging by fate You know what it feels like when you’re dancing blind All alone, just the beat inside my soul Take me home, where my dreams are made of gold In the zone where the beat is uncontrolled I know what it feels like Come on make me feel alive”

• “We were born ready, ready to be free Chasin’ every thrill we could see With our eyes steady, waking to the dream Aching to be thrown in the ring If nothing comes easy as long as we’re breathing We’ll go all the way or go home We were born ready, wherever it leads What we have is all we need ‘Cause if it’s fast or slow All I really know is I’m gonna enjoy the ride And if it’s hard or soft before we get off I’m gonna enjoy the ride, enjoy the ride”

• “When I’m three feet from the edge Will I break before I bend? I’m only human, ashes to dust Making a mess of us Where the words fall from your lips To save this sinking ship Give me a sign to keep my heart beating Throw me a line in over my head”

• “I can hear the sound of a heartbeat before it goes out Won’t ever leave my memory of bloodshed all around And I can see a tear on my father’s face before it falls out Oh, my enemy, how could I have ever let you down? Oh When all these trees saw us grow Cut our teeth and make our bones right here We’d play with shields made of stone Share our dreams and sit our thrones Be still, ‘cause I see smoke up ahead and I got steel in my hands We will return like warriors, I swear, that we’ll find glory up ahead Tell me Where is my home? I don’t recognize the faces anymore, no Where is my friend? The one I’ve known since I was only just a kid I think it’s time to say goodbye Goodbye, goodbye”

• “Cause there’s no one to love you When you build your walls Too high”

• “He’d trade his guns for love But he’s caught in the crossfire And he keeps wakin’ up But it’s not to the sound of birds The tyranny The violent streets Deprived of all that we’re blessed with And we can’t get enough, no Heaven, if you sent us down So we can build a playground For the sinners To play as saints You’d be so proud of what we made I hope you got some beds around ‘Cause you’re the only refuge now For every mother Every child Every brother That’s caught in the crossfire That’s caught in the crossfire I’d trade my luck to know Why he’s caught in the crossfire And I’m here wakin’ up To the sun and the sound of birds Society’s anxiety Deprived of all that we’re blessed with We just can’t get enough, no Heaven, if you sent us down So we can build a playground For the sinners To play as saints You’d be so proud of what we made I hope you got some beds around ‘Cause you’re the only refuge now”

• “Feeling lost in life means that you’re totally free to go anywhere you want”

• “For years I thought I was looking for the meaning of life, one of my biggest revelations is when I realized I was actually seeking the meaning of suffering.”

• “In your ignorance you want to immortalize your body because you think that is you. Seek to immortalize your mind. Then you may have whatever body you wish, when you wish.”

• “Our feelings arise because we see pictures as extensions of the real world. Pictures that affect us strongly use structural principles based on the way we have to react in the real world in order to survive. As soon as you understand these principles, you will understand why pictures have such specific emotional effects. You will understand how pictures work.”

• “Pictures are usually read as though there is an invisible, emotional horizon line stretching across the middle of the space and dividing it into top and bottom.”

• “Cause it’s not too late, it’s not too late I, I see the hope in your heart And sometimes you lose and sometimes you’re shooting Broken arrows in the dark We have to tear down walls that live in your heart To find someone you call home Now you see me for me and my beautiful scars So take my hand, don’t let go”

• “For when joy passes its climax we are bound to revert to anger, and when anger passes its climax we always revert to joy, because in both cases we are off balance.”

• “Set your will on one aim, And be equal to the gods.”

• “What common knowledge knows is shallow”

• “The utmost in speech is to be rid of speech, the utmost doing is Doing Nothing”

• “When a man’s inner integrity is not firm, something oozes from his body and becomes an aura, which outside him presses on the hearts of others; it makes other men honour him more than his elders and betters, and gets him into difficulties. The only motive of an innkeeper is to sell his rice and soup, and increase his earnings; his profits are meagre, the considerations which sway him have little weight. If men with so little to gain from me value me so highly as a customer, will it not be even worse with the lord of ten thousand chariots, who has worn out his body and drained his knowledge in state affairs?”

• “If you act nobly and banish from your mind the thought that you are noble, where can you go and not be loved?”

• “Why should the place where you lived be different from your own palace, or the place of our excursion different from your own park? Your Majesty feels at home with the permanent, is suspicious of the sudden and temporary. But can one always measure how far and how fast a scene may alter and turn into something else?”

• “With rank high enough to distinguish you, and more property than you need, you are too far above other men. Dreaming at night that you are a slave, reverting from ease to toil, is fortune righting itself. Can you reasonably expect to have it both ways, dreaming as well as awake?”

• “What I mistake for ecstacy is simply the abscence of grief”

• “That funny feeling is the emptiness of everything that is supposed to fill the gaps. When all the gaps are filled with plastic, it still looks empty and cracked. We are fed too big a plate of nothing but empty calories, and the funny feeling is being hungry with a full stomach.”

• “People cry, not because they are weak. It is because they’ve been strong for too long”

• “Sometimes what we want is simpler and closer than we think”

• “She filled my head with dreams, telling me I could become anything I wanted. I believed her so much I thought I could be white.”

• “Part of you is obsessed with the mission to save your parents, while the other part is filled with anger and resentment because you know you were stunted by parents who were so helpless or dysfunctional that they could not be real parents to you”

• “I don’t care what baggage they dragged over the ocean. They have no right to make me carry it the rest of my life”

• “Your true self can survive with just freedom and will. Your true self is fiercer, braver, purer, infinitely more adaptable, and at home with nature than you ever dreamed possible”

• “As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is Authenticity”

• “Children who are respected learn respect. Children who are cared for learn to care for those weaker than themselves. Children who are loved for what they are cannot learn intolerance. In an environment such as this, they will develop their own ideals, which can be nothing other than humane, since they grew out of the experience of love.”

• “You are allowed to take up space. Own who you are and what you want for yourself. Stop downplaying the things you care about, the hopes you have. Own your passions, your thoughts, your perceptions. Own your fire. Stop putting your worth in the hands of others; stop letting them decide your value. Own saying no, saying yes. Own your mood, your feelings. Own your plans, your path, your success”

• “When interacting with others, practise simply relaxing in their presence. Try to experiment with not doing anything, saying anything, or impressing anyone. You are not asked to advise, be useful, or advise anyone. Even when others are expressing distress, you can practice ‘just’ listening and offering your quiet presence. This will help you gradually realize that your mere existence is sufficient and that ”doing” has its limits. ”

• “I’m not so weird to me.”

• “One of the most pertinent lessons of being a highly sensitive and intense person is learning to shrug your shoulders when you feel ostracised by the world, rejected by a friend, or abandoned by a lover. We can start by acknowledging and accepting who we are to gain such strength. Your trait as an atypical, sensitive, and intense person is a gift. High functioning autism: You did nothing to get it, nor can you get rid of it. It was given to you at birth. You are wired that way. You love deeply, but you may not be able to say it. You see beauty where others don’t, but you may not have a pal who appreciates it alongside you. You have a unique sense of humor, and those who understand it are delighted by your presence. “A normal day” for you is a roller coaster ride for others. You have a million shades of emotions, nuanced observations, and complex thoughts at any given hour. Your thoughts are deep and complex. When you read a book, listen to a song, or watch a movie, what you see or hear are not merely images or sounds. But rather multi-layered, interwoven meanings and existential questions. Your mind has the ability to travel a million miles even if you sit still. You may not know it yourself; others certainly don’t see it, but your heart breaks when you see the world’s pain. You love fiercely— not just humans but nature, science, the arts, a discipline, and the world. As a child, you were not afraid to show it. But when you realize how much your passion threatens others, you learned to hide. How much do we adjust our intensity and oddity to match the world’s frequency? Any intense and sensitive misfits across time and space ask this question. If you tell the truth, others become frightened. You are relentlessly giving, but not everyone can reciprocate. You may be dismissed and judged when you try to reveal the real you, speak your mind, and express your true feelings. People may blatantly say you are dramatic, arrogant, and extreme. Or, they quietly retreat and passively punish you. It takes incredible courage to stand up for yourself and be who you are. But Here is a crucial piece of wisdom for the neuro-atypical gifted soul that you are: Once you accept yourself, including everything that comes with high functioning autism, other people’s judgment, criticism, and rejection… will hurt less. If you can wholeheartedly accept your intensity and drive for what others see as odd, you will find it easier to navigate the world. Your interpersonal fragility will decrease because you no longer depend on other people’s love, acceptance, praise, approval, and appreciation. In the past, if a friend went silent, you might immediately think you had done “too much.” You would wonder if you had said too much, revealed too much, acted too extremely, or acted in a way that elicited their judgment. You might have fallen into the trap of self-blame and shame. You might blame yourself for acting the way you did. You might be unable to do anything else while you anxiously await their responses. You might wonder how you can edit your words and change your personality so that you will not be rejected again. If you had experienced family trauma in your childhood, intense feelings could arise. You might feel abandoned by the world and betrayed by those who are supposed to love you. You sink into a deep ditch of silent anger and hopelessness. In some therapies, you are told to eradicate the thoughts and feelings because they are ‘irrational’ and that you are ‘catastrophizing’. But intellectually, knowing the rejection may or may not be true doesn’t mean your nervous system can calm down. To the hurt inner child within you, even the mere chance that someone would dislike you can feel like the world is collapsing. Thus, rather than rationalizing and arguing with ourselves, the ultimate strategy is to parent yourself so well that you will no longer be dependent on other people’s love and approval. Here is a new path that will bring you more peace, freedom, and joy— the way of unconditional self-love. Having it, you no longer hinge on your peace and sanity on your other people’s timely responses to you, what they think of you, or whether or not they like you. Learn to be yourself – intense, sensitive, quietly empathetic, restless, curious, and passionate. Do not pretend to know less than you do, do not hide the extent of your true feelings, and do not put yourself down before others say something . Make a joke even if it is not understood, cry when you feel the urge, and laugh out loud when you want to. Call when you want to, be warm if you want to, and speak your mind without over-editing every word. Express your strong opinions and respect others, tell them you are offended when you are, and it is okay to express your needs even you are not asking others to meet them. Authenticity is your natural ‘filter’. If someone loves the above, they are your person. If not, you need not bow to their preferences and lovingly release them to find someone better suited to be their friend. As long as you act honestly, the outcome is best for all. ” “Feel in your body the deep knowledge that every animal, tree, and flower is your friend. You are anything but alone. Look up into the sky and talk to ‘God’, the Buddha, Allah, any higher power that you believe in, or a departed loved one, knowing that they are forever in your heart and that love never ends. Build a personal library and have virtual conversations with brilliant and like-minded souls near and far. Create a piece of art or music that expresses your most profound truth, and know that the moment someone resonates with your work is a deep spiritual connection. There are ways to take such good care of yourself that growing old means sage-ing up. Know yourself so well that you say no to that which does not excite your heart. Give yourself permission to receive nourishment and know that you are worth it. Be so gentle, so loving, and compassionate with yourself that you feel safe in your own presence. Be so encouraging and loving that you do not believe in mistakes, only in learning. Accept the imperfection of friendships; enjoy what is there and let go of what is not. Mourn the ideal parents you never had, but vow to be the best parents you can be, even to yourself. Sylvia Plath did say the best way to get what you want is to be who you are. So, starting today, when something has not gone the way you expected, when you feel judged, rejected, or abandoned, can you learn to be on your own side? Shrug your shoulders. Give yourself a big hug. Then move on and Rock on.”

• “My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.”

• “There might not have been any explicit trauma, but on a level deep inside, the parentified child did not feel welcome in the world.”

• “We may look like we are loved based on what can externally be seen, yet inside we feel like orphans”

• “Adulthood is an attempt to become the antithesis of the wounded child within us”

• “And as the ancient saying went, it is easy to dodge the spear in the open, but hard to avoid a stab in the dark.”

• “Xiaochun…” he said softly. “You’re right. As long as we’re alive, there are endless possibilities. But just because we die doesn’t mean that our hopes and dreams die with us! “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can say that when I look at all of these graves, I’m absolutely certain… that these disciples who died in battle did it because of the Dao that existed in their hearts!”

• “You often found it easier just to adapt to their ideas of what was best for you rather than trying to figure it out for yourself. But in all this adapting to your society’s attempts to make you fit in, and in your own attempt to find less trouble, you have unwittingly relinquished your most basic foundation: your total and absolute freedom to create.”

• “That is the optimal creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no feeling of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering the receiving of it—that is the Science of Deliberate Creation at its best.”

• “You cannot desire something, predominantly focus on the absence of it, and then expect to receive it,”

• “You would not walk into a brightly lit room and look for the “dark switch.” In other words, you would not expect to find a switch that would flood an inky darkness into the room to cover the brightness of the light—you would find a switch that would resist the light, for in the absence of the light there is darkness.”

• “In a world that often seems too crowded or busy to notice beautiful things or make meaningful connections, there is still room for each of us to grow in the ways we were meant to.”

• “Conforming to convention is emptiness,” replied Meng Hao. “Yielding to and complying with the Heavens is well and good. Unending persistence is fine, too. However, I cannot choose either of those.”

• “It is hard for me to resent my parents, although I envy them their naivete.”

• “When Love cast me out, it was Cruelty who took pity upon me”

• “When you care for yourself first, the world will also find you worthy of care.”

• “But because of the weight of the secrets, we become more humble and understanding.”

• “Why should your life be destroyed by the easy criticism of those who do not know you or care about you?””

• “Just as a mother looks at her child with love, look at your own suffering with compassion. You will soon feel that you are not alone. There is a soft inner core of love and caring at the heart of every suffering. You are not thrown into this world alone.”

• “The greatest gift that parents can give their child is to be happy themselves. If the parents are happy, then the child can grow up into a happy and confident adult. But if the parents are not happy, then the child can feel worthless— unable to make his parents happy no matter what.”

• “The reason adolescents don’t listen to their parents and stubbornly try to have their own way is that they are learning to be independent. It is normal, so don’t worry too much.”

• “Do your best to give your children someone to look up to.”

• “It is nearly impossible for a son or daughter to change a parent’s personality, values, or behavior. Even if children consider their parents problematic in some way, they have neither the right nor the responsibility to change them”

• “If you assume that, since you’ve been together for so long, you should be able to read each other’s minds, there are so many things you will fail to understand about each other.”

• “When someone is showing his temper, it could be because he wants us to hear about his current situation and empathize. Rather than arguing, try to understand his deeper needs”

• “If we think of the child as a stranger, we focus on the inconvenience to ourselves, but if we think of the child as a family member, we become merciful, wondering whether the child is uncomfortable or in pain”

• “If you give something your full attention, whatever it is, and examine it closely, it will come to attract your interest and care.”

• “My interest in philosophy started where I’d imagine it starts for most people: a dissatisfaction with what I had been told about life combined with a curiosity about what I had not.”

• “My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights”

• “My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.”

• “the experience and effects of concrete knowledge can be fleeting, but the wonder found in the spirit of the unknown can be constant and enduring”

• “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,”

• “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes”

• “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,”

• “As we experience more of life, and we are continually disappointed by our optimism’s inability to align with the real conditions of the world, our optimism is beaten further and further into submission.”

• “healthy dose of pessimism is necessary in our ability to adequately deal with this life. It helps us mitigate our expectations and serves as padding that protects us from life’s constant attempts to beat our spirit out of us. Pessimism counterbalances the ridiculously overly optimistic expectations of the culture we live in and helps us adapt out of the deeply detached, unrealistic perspective that we likely formed as children. It reminds us that things won’t always go our way or always be that nice, but rather, things will go wrong a lot, but despite this, we can still be ok.”

• “To be completely optimistic about the rules always working in our favor would be foolish. However, to be completely pessimistic about the game as a whole simply because the rules don’t always work in our favor would be equally foolish.”

• “the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.”

• “In the dirt of life, it is up to us to plant the seeds, watch the flowers grow, and enjoy their beauty, even in spite of the fact that we know that they will die.”

• “Perhaps all reality is a prison and time is its guard”

• “Perhaps what we should and only can do is to try to enjoy the process of playing with the blocks of philosophy like children playing with toy blocks for no reason other than the curiosity and fun of it; not because in the end the blocks will provide something that stays up forever, but because we inevitably will take the blocks down, put them away for a little while, and then play with them again on another day, in a different way.”

• “Kōans did not spring up out of lack of thought or contemplation, but rather, out of a specific sort of contemplation: a self-referential thinking that denies its ability to be a single, concrete, and universal thought that answers or understands what might exist beyond itself. Zen and the lesson of the kōans suggest that we should flow with life, ask questions, contemplate them, but not become tricked by any singular idea or answer that might tempt us into a final resolution”

• “Just like how the center of a tornado is calm with little to no motion, despite it being surrounded by a coil of rapid, violent wind, we can live in the center of the tornado of knowing and unknowing and still remain calm and at ease.”

• “it takes no more than a sick stomach or migraine to realize just how heavy this corporeal weight is, how stricken and limited by it we are. We are stuck inside the body, captives to it, subject to its faulty and fragile mechanisms that do and will break, keeping us bound in space according to its condition—until it finally turns itself off, and us with it.”

• “We can only think through the mind, and we can only think in the way our mind thinks.”

• “It is a demonstration of humanity’s overzealous ego and anthropocentrism to think that so long as no other humans tell them what to do, they are free.”

• “Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis,”

• “Like the desire for perfect, unending happiness, the desire for complete and absolute freedom is impossible. But like happiness, it is, in its true, ultimate form, a state that comes and goes, unattainable in the ideal but attainable in the moment—in the moments when we surrender to the complete unified image of being, when we cease trying to square circles and placate everything that contests us, when we stop trying to escape what cannot be escaped. It is the classic lesson: the Chinese finger trap, the Tao in Taoism, Nirvana in Buddhism, the silence of Wittgenstein; the harder one tries, the harder one flails, the more entrenched one becomes.”

• “for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfilment.”

• “In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.”

• “When we persist with the belief that things outside of ourselves or things in the future will provide us with a form of ultimate happiness, we exchange the real moments of our lives for ones that do not exist. We become dependent on things outside of ourselves that we cannot control, and we endlessly run on a treadmill of unceasing desire.”

• “We can and should engage our nature to progress and pursue bigger, faster, better, and more interesting things, but we should ensure that in our pursuits, we are intentional about what we are doing so as to ensure that we are not being careless with our time and wasting our experience of life”

• “No matter what task we undertake, we will do it wastefully if we assume that anything beyond the task itself will provide anything better than the experience of focus and presence in the task.”

• “Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them”

• “It is now that we must find time and it is now that we must find happiness if it is either that we are seeking, because if we do not focus the lens through which we view life right now, everything we see from this moment forward will remain out of focus”

• “Starting from birth, we seemingly run, if not sprint, through life, racing out of every moment, unsatisfied with what life is and constantly looking to the future for what life could be if we could just obtain something more or different. Our cultures overwhelm us with the reinforcement of this idea, convincing us that our duty is to achieve, buy, own, and live perfect, unaffected lives. This delusion, however, frenzies us with an anxiety that we are then told, by culture, that we can rid ourselves of if we just achieve a few more things, make a little more money, be a little more popular, and buy a little more stuff, creating an endless feedback loop of unsatisfied hunger. If we cave into this, we surrender our life, we give up our self.”

• “We don’t have much, if any, control over what happens to us, how people see and treat us, or what happens because of what we do, and in the big picture, none of it really matters all that much anyway. And so, we must define our happiness not by what we own or achieve, not by how others see us, not by some bigger picture of life, but by how we think and see our self and live our own life through what we deem virtuous and relevant”

• “But of course, after a point, worrying about the future, the unknown, and the potential for things to go wrong is nothing but a useless handicap”

• “Once one has done everything that is rationally and realistically preventative, one should work to revert their attention back to the present, leaving all additional concern about the future for the future.”

• “But worrying about what one cannot know nor control in the future has no value to either, and comes at the cost of the present.”

• “We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”

• “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”

• “There is a spectrum of human horrors, some far worse and more trying than others. In some cases, it is largely improbable to recover in the true sense of the term. But even if this is true, and one is worried about these sorts of horrible things happening, then again, they haven’t happened yet.”

• “Human history is carved through trenches. We dip in and out of oscillating hardships, founded or unfounded. We are plagued by plagues and hatred and conflict and mortal fragility. But if we are fortunate enough to worry about something that is potentially not survivable happening to us as opposed to trying to survive something that already has, it is perhaps worth trying to be ok while we still are.”

• “Men are thrifty in guarding their private property, but as soon as it comes to wasting time, they are most extravagant with the one commodity for which it’s respectable to be greedy,”

• “Seneca thought that because the present is so brief and immaterial, we mostly struggle to properly perceive and value”

• “Unlike the majority of possessions in life, you can’t see, hold, or truly know time, making it incomprehensibly slippery and abstract. Seneca thought that because the present is so brief and immaterial, we mostly struggle to properly perceive and value it”

• “It is inevitable that life will be not just very short but very miserable for those who acquire by great toil what they must keep by greater toil”

• “It seems that, in this, the worthiest use of time is in some sense spending it on reflecting on time itself. By considering, or at least pondering time and how to best use it, one is paradoxically using it well.”

• “Wasted time or well-spent time is all the same when viewed from a sufficient distance, and it is only the individual who can examine, consider, and determine the best way to balance and claim their time in each moment. And, of course, all anyone can ever do is try their best.”

• “What makes the sad song that I listen to when I’m in my worst of moods work is that it validates my feelings and transmutes them rather than denies them.”

• “We are perhaps the only stop on this evolutionary train that is outside the tunnel of darkness, able to take the material of everything and make it into something beautiful or helpful or interesting, to understand and create the meaning of meaning itself. And to do so just because we can, because the universe, for some reason, gave us a blank page to write on.”

• “As an assessment of the nature of reality, he would describe the Will as a sort of malevolent force that we, as individual selves, become victims of in its process of continuation, deceived by our own mind and body to go against our fundamental interests and yearnings in order to carry it out. Since the Will has no aim or purpose other than its perpetual continuation, then the Will can never be satisfied. And since we are expressions of it, neither can we. Thus, we are driven to consume beings, things, ideas, goals, circumstances, and all the rest, constantly hoping that we will feel satisfaction or happiness as a result, while constantly being left in the wake of each achievement unsatisfied.”

• “The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy,” he wrote.”

• “There can be no turning against the Will if the Will is doing the turning.”

• “We are merely born into a crazy, sad, violent reality with a mind and body that are often all in conspiracy against us.”

• “There are no facts, only interpretations,”

• “If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how,”

• “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it.”

• “But in this reality, the one we must live, there was no option to have done differently, and there is no other way for things to go. Every decision you’ve made was the best and only decision you could’ve made at the time with the information you had and the state of mind you were in. And every condition of life that either these decisions led to or that are fundamental to life in general, you have no control over and cannot change.”

• “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things”

• “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation”

• “Ultimately, the question may not be how much you love your life right now, but how much you could and how. And perhaps sometimes the only way to experience the beauty of things is to think about things in a beautiful way.”

• “What’s scarier than an opponent who smiles while being beaten?”

• “Even in writing about the futility and meaninglessness of life and its endeavors, the power of the creative process can, in some sense, save the writer from the very content of their own work, paradoxically making the futility and meaninglessness of life that they discuss somewhat less futile and meaningless.”

• “When all the current reasons—moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on—no longer guide one’s life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life. I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing.”

• “Everything that is formulated becomes more tolerable”

• “Cursed with the gift of consciousness, we are all inescapably forced into a beautiful confrontation of the void and the absurd inevitability of creating meaning and somethingness out of it.”

• “In other words, one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the century lived his life with his work buried in some drawer, aware, unaware, or indifferent to the fact that he was sitting on some the most significant works in modern history. He was, in the eyes of his father, an inadequate disappointment—and yet, in the eyes of history, he is an immensely important individual. One can only wonder how many individuals like Kafka have walked and continue to walk this earth, completely disconnected or restricted from ever seeing who they really are or could be. How many Kafkas have lived and died without ever sharing their voice with the world; voices that would have changed it forever?”

• “How many people never know who they’ll be after they’re gone?”

• “Perhaps in this, Kafka is suggesting that the struggle to find solace and understanding is both inescapable and impossible. As conscious, rational beings, we fight against the absurdity, trying to resolve the discrepancy between us and the universe. But ironically, we only serve to perpetuate the very struggle we are trying to resolve by trying to resolve the unresolvable. And in this sense, on some level, we almost want the struggle.”

• “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly”

• “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy … Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books. Kafka’s”

• “Existence precedes essence.””

• “life exists for itself. Beyond itself, it is intrinsically meaningless.”

• “We each have our little flickers of time here. No one else will ever know much, if anything, of what it’s like to be who we are. And for the most part, no one will ever really care. Our life is ultimately our life, and so long as we are not harming others in the process, we must create a life of our own meaning, determining our own objects of importance, committing to their pursuit, and reaping the significance and wonder of life along the way.”

• “However, perhaps it is less about getting a potential course of life right and more about attempting to do so with self-honesty and virtue—to live a life that can be looked back on with the knowledge that some of our decisions were perhaps wrong in their effects but right in their intention not to sell ourselves short.”

• “At any street corner, the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”

• “Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”

• “‘Perhaps in certain ways it is a helpful construct in talking about”

• “‘Psychology is a terrible word.’ He agreed vigorously. ‘Yes, it is terrible, isn’t it?’ he said, but with an expression that indicated that he thought it rather tasteless of me even to use it. ‘Perhaps in certain ways it is a helpful construct in talking about a certain kind of mind. The country people who live around me are fascinating because their lives are so closely bound to fate that they really are predestined.”

• “Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so?’ he said, looking round the table. ‘Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls – which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”

• “‘Aristotle says in the Poetics,’ said Henry, ‘that objects such as corpses, painful to view in themselves, can become delightful to contemplate in a work of art.‘”

• “‘Death is the mother of beauty,’ said Henry. ‘And what is beauty?’ ‘Terror,’ ‘Well said,’ said Julian. ‘Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.‘”

• “‘We don’t like to admit it,’ said Julian, ‘but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks or the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?‘”

• “‘And it’s a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves, to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But that is a mistake.’ ‘Why?’ said Francis, leaning slightly forward. Julian arched an eyebrow; his long, wise nose gave his profile a forward tilt, like an Etruscan in a bas-relief. ‘Because it is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep the will away entirely.”

• “Pragma tists are often strangely superstitious.”

• “‘Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?’ he said. ‘It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?”

• “Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.‘”

• “The chronological sorting of memories is an interesting business.”

• “Grown children (an oxymoron, I realize) veer instinctively to extremes; the young scholar is much more a pedant than his older counterpart.”

• “I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when character is fixed forever;”

• “Sometimes, when there’s been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over. Action slows to a dreamlike glide, frame by frame; the motion of a hand, a sentence spoken, fills an eternity. Little things – a cricket on a stem, the veined branches on a leaf- are magnified, brought from the background in achingly clear focus.”

• “It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came.”

• “But, like the Invisible Man in H. G. Wells, I discovered that my gift had its price, which took the form of, in my case as in his, a sort of mental darkness. It seemed that people failed to meet my eye, made as if to walk through me; my superstitions began to transform themselves into something like mania.”

• “drink tonight?’ One likes to think there’s something in it, that old platitude amor vincit omnia. But if I’ve learned one thing in my short sad life, it is that that particular platitude is a lie. Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”

• “‘I suppose that when anyone accustomed to working with the mind is faced with a straightforward action, there’s a tendency to embellish, to make it overly clever. On paper there’s a certain symmetry. Now that I’m faced with the prospect of executing it I realize how hideously complicated it is.‘”

• “‘I never realized, you know, how much we rely on appearances,’”

• “When the snow finally melted it went as quickly as it had come.”

• “‘About a Hindu saint being able to slay a thousand on the battlefield and it not being a sin unless he felt remorse.‘”

• “Alas, poor gentleman, He look’d not like the ruins of his youth But like the ruins of those ruins.”

• “You must know, a truly sincere heart is always lustrous!””

• “Punishing one’s self for something one can no longer alter…that is nothing more than being made a fool of by fate! The only one who rules over myself…is myself!””

• “Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness.”

• “When you try to stop activity by passivity your very effort fills you with activity.”

• “The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.”

• “To return to the root is to find meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.”

• “Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”

• “A person’s true nature is only revealed when he’s pushed right to the edge, am I right? Now that their bellies are full, and they are feeling all nice and comfy, they are acting like a bunch of spoiled a.s.sholes. I don’t like guys like Kang Seok, but that b.a.s.t.a.r.d’s opinions aren’t half wrong.” ”….” “You continue being nice to them, they’ll eventually end up thinking that it’s their birthright or something. Well, in any case…. Don’t ever trust those two stinking b*tches, okay?”

• “He told himself, ‘you find yourself in a such a favorable position, so much better than compared to other people, yet is this all you can do?”

• “When he was still addicted to gambling, he was constantly on edge. The victim mentality took center stage in his heart and caused him to choke up over nothing important; often, he’d get defensive and angry even if he was in the wrong.”

• “Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.” “Is that…. the Golden Rule?”

• “Hiya~. And I heard that when a girl bears a grudge, even snow will fall in the middle of a Summer”

• “There will be other expeditions in the future. I pray that you don’t bet everything on this one.”

• “Money and fame? Of course, they sounded nice. However, none of them compared to his own self-worth he had regained after such a struggle.”

• “Goodwill with goodwill, and malice with malice… I’ve learned a lot during this expedition.” “I agree. After all, humans aren’t the only race who possess intelligence.”

• “There is no right or wrong in matters of survival. In this world, whether you are a righteous man or of a wicked persuasion, you have to gather under one banner and pool your resources to survive. That is the case, even now.”

• “However, didn’t Gula say it? The future was not that easy to change. That he’d have to go through unimaginable trials and tribulations. That he needed to exceed his own limits”

• “Wait. Even if you don’t do anything, there will be people who curse you. The more famous you get, the more hate you’ll receive. Some people will even resent you. That’s not the end of it. There will be a ton of people who are going to try to use you, even if you didn’t do anything wrong.”

• “Just look at celebrities. Sure, some of them might deserve the hate they receive, but there are a lot more who don’t. Do you know why haters leave mean comments or attack them on their social media? It’s simple. Because they’re unhappy, because they want attention, because they’re bored, because they don’t like the way someone looks, because they just want to argue, because they’re jealous. There are countless reasons.”

• “What heals a wounded heart isn’t time or medicine. It’s sincerity”

• “Humans all have a limit to their vessel. The same goes for ghosts.”

• “I think life is like the four seasons. When spring pa.s.ses, summer comes. When summer leaves, autumn comes knocking. And when autumn departs, winter enters.”

• “In the four seasons of life, spring won’t come just by waiting.” ”….” “You have to endure the bitter cold and struggle to break through the frozen earth. Only then can you see the light of day and welcome spring.”

• “The moment the youth realized that he wasn’t special, the only thing he could do was put in painstaking, bloodcurdling effort.”

• “You’re right. It is hard. After all, you have to unite people who aren’t like you and people who aren’t like each other.”

• “They might think I’m just being c.o.c.ky.” “Only if you introduce yourself arrogantly. Depending on your att.i.tude or the situation, things might have gone in a different direction.”

• “Words have different weights depending on who says them. The words of a famous, authoritative person are different than the words of a nameless brat.” Kazuki muttered endlessly. “And fame is the strongest card in your possession. What’s wrong about using something you’ve built up fair and square”

• “You need to know your value a bit more,”

• “You should find a style that suits your nature. You know, wear the clothes that fit you.”

• “He who wishes to wear the crown, bear its weight.”

• “The bigger your goals are, the bigger burden you must face.”

• “A leader is not someone who is placed in that position by someone else. A leader is someone who wishes to become a leader himself.”

• “People tend to get hasty when they aren’t able to finish everything in time.”

• “In front of profit, justification changes depending on the situation and power at hand”

• “One could never predict everything in life, and life was bound to be full of ups and downs, but now that he had experienced this irony of fate, he couldn’t help but feel bewildered.”

• “One could never predict everything in life, and life was bound to be full of ups and downs, but now that he had experienced this irony of fate, he couldn’t help but feel bewildered. On the other hand, he felt a bit creeped out. Ian told him about this. That an action he considered insignificant might cause huge waves.”

• “Rather than struggling to overcome this emotion, he accepted it fully to get used to it”

• “You lose a war when you get scared.””

• “Life isn’t a game you can see the ending of after clicking on one or two choices, is it?”

• “Because you’re so uncomfortable with getting anything from my parents that they’re too careful with doing anything for you”

• “Enduring an injustice makes you a person, but enduring a loss makes you a pushover”

• “A world where one only pursues their own freedom and success, throwing aside all morals and responsibilities. A world poisoned by self-indulgence.””

• “New wine has to be brewed in a new keg”

• “‘make the body learn if the brain can’t understand’.”

• “To grow, one must first face their flaws.”

• “That was just how human psychology worked. After hogging a jar of honey for a long time, they wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing it with someone else.”

• “Seeing it once is better than hearing it a thousand times.”

• “There is no such thing as an eternal war. A war will end. Whether that be in a constructive way or a destructive way.”

• “There’s no rule saying that battles have to be conducted with weapons. You can use words, money, or even law, religion, pen, and other things as well.””

• “Do you know what the most important thing is when a scammer is preparing to strike?” Seol Jihu raised one of his eyebrows. Kim Hannah continued without batting an eye. “It’s simple — to make sure the person getting scammed doesn’t know he’s getting scammed.” ”….” “Only when the scam is successful would they realize, ‘Ah, that was a scam.’”

• “When apologizing for a mistake, one should not be overly dignified, but one should also not lower oneself more than necessary”

• “When apologizing for a mistake, one should not be overly dignified, but one should also not lower oneself more than necessary either.”

• “Unless there was someone to say harsh words and correct mistakes, a child would grow up without knowing right and wrong.”

• “—You’re a terrifying man if you said that intentionally. But if you said that sincerely, then you’re an even more terrifying person.”

• “I’ve learned a lot this time and found a lot of things I have to keep learning.” Seol Jihu candidly spoke. Hao Win peered at him from across the crystal. —…That’s your scariest trait. It was an unexpected remark. —You’re a terrifying man if you said that intentionally. But if you said that sincerely, then you’re an even more terrifying person. “Huh?” —People change as their accomplishments stack and their position grows higher. They begin to think, ‘I’ve earned this much. I’ve achieved all these things. What would you know?’ They naturally begin to get full of themselves. He crossed his arms and continued in a tired voice. —It’s not easy to keep your initial resolve. I’m no exception to this. Seol”

• “She remembered the saying, three men can speak a tiger into existence. Even a lie would seem real if enough people said it.”

• “There was a saying that people would confuse goodwill for privilege if it went on for too long”

• “I can’t do something that goes against the law, but I also can’t stand by and watch other people do things that go against the law. Being an unmoving spectator isn’t a crime, but it is injustice.”

• “Being talented does not mean being smart or intelligent. It also has nothing to do with how they normally act.”

• “As someone once said, it was foolish to resent someone for their inborn talent; rather, one should try to take one step every day for ten, twenty years. Then one day, they would meet the person they always wanted to become.”

• “Just like how a genius had their own path, an ordinary person had their own path.”

• “I thought I could do it somehow, but… Sometimes I get so tired like today…”

• “I thought I’d be fine…” He smacked his lips before continuing. “I thought I could do it somehow, but… Sometimes I get so tired like today…”

• “it was inevitable for amazing things to become familiar and new things to become worn-out. Such was the natural order of the world.”

• “I just was, actually. The past despair is what makes the present peace all the more precious, isn’t it?” Phi Sora flinched. She raised her head again”

• “Sure. Perhaps you really were trash like you say. I won’t say the past is past. Wrongdoings of the past are wrongdoings nonetheless. But even if you committed a terrible sin, depending on whether you take that opportunity to learn from your mistakes or remain the same, you can either be recycled or become a waste.””

• “But laying one’s weakness out in the open takes a lot of courage.”

• “Words, especially in philosophy, aren’t used to logically explain that one plus one is two. No matter how nice something sounds, you need to ruminate over it and interpret it in such a way that it benefits you personally.”

• “Words, especially in philosophy, aren’t used to logically explain that one plus one is two. No matter how nice something sounds, you need to ruminate over it and interpret it in such a way that it benefits you personally. Doubt is the origin of wisdom. Isn’t that what Descartes said?”

• “Humans are not born for the sake of existing. Humans exist first. They decide on the meaning of life and their own values afterward. Through their own choice.””

• “Existentialism emphasizes the freedom of choice and the consequence of that choice. Depending on what you choose to do and how you choose to take responsibility, you can decide what life you will lead and what death you will meet.””

• “In other words, human beings are not trapped by destiny. They are existences capable of pioneering their own fate. They can decide for themselves by choosing and taking responsibility.””

• “There are countless people in this world. Naturally, countless fates are intertwined with each other in incomprehensible ways. Kind of like the stars in the night sky.””

• “Looking at the rising sun, Seol Jihu vowed internally. To become a sun that gives off the light on its own. To become a star that can share its light to other people. Both in Paradise and on Earth.”

• “Those Who Meet Eventually Bid Farewell While Those Who Have Parted Eventually Meet Again”

• “Look. There’s a limit to improving your skills through simple repet.i.tive training. Even spear techniques like Thrust, Strike, and Cut have their limits. And of course, mindless repet.i.tion is even less effective for physical body skills like Intuition.””

• “Stop a.s.suming that if you keep trying, it will somehow work. Don’t you have a brain? You’ve walked this path more than a thousand times already.””

• “If your destination is far away, you need to think about getting there step”

• “Every flow has its ebbs, all that’s fair must fade.”

• “You’re an engineering major, right?” “Yes.” “I think sometimes you just think too hard. When you solve a problem, you expect each step to be logical and precise, like math.””

• “A soft answer turns away wrath. Sometimes the same word changes meaning depending on the context. You say one thing, and others will interpret it in hundreds of different ways.”

• “By lost, I mean that we momentarily lose touch with ourselves and with the full extent of our possibilities. Instead, we fall into a robotlike way of seeing and thinking and doing. In those moments, we break contact with what is deepest in ourselves and affords us perhaps our greatest opportunities for creativity, learning, and growing. If we are not careful, those clouded moments can stretch out and become most of our lives.”

• “We pay a high price for this mistaken and unexamined assumption, for our almost willful ignoring of the richness of our present moments. The fallout accumulates silently, coloring our lives without our knowing it or being able to do something about it. We may never quite be where we actually are, never quite touch the fullness of our possibilities. Instead, we lock ourselves into a personal fiction that we already know who we are, that we know where we are and where we are going, that we know what is happening—all the while remaining enshrouded in thoughts, fantasies, and impulses, mostly about the past and about the future, about what we want and like, and what we fear and don’t like, which spin out continuously, veiling our direction and the very ground we are standing on.”

• “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

• “understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother”

• “Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.”

• “expectations. So, in meditation practice, the best way to get somewhere is to let go of trying to get anywhere at all.”

• “If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, This is the best season of your life.”

• “mistakes were often as revealing as the right answers.”

• “The truly correct proof is one that strikes a harmonious balance between strength and flexibility. There are plenty of proofs that are technically correct but are messy and inelegant or counterintuitive. But it’s not something you can put into words—explaining why a formula is beautiful is like trying to explain why the stars are beautiful.”

• “It was just a little puzzle,” he would say, “a game”; and his tone sounded more sad than modest. “The person who made the problem already knew the answer. Solving a problem for which you know there’s an answer is like climbing a mountain with a guide, along a trail someone else has laid. In mathematics, the truth is somewhere out there in a place no one knows, beyond all the beaten paths. And it’s not always at the top of the mountain. It might be in a crack on the smoothest cliff or somewhere deep in the valley.”

• “A problem has a rhythm of its own, just like a piece of music,” the Professor said. “Once you get the rhythm, you get the sense of the problem as a whole, and you can see where the traps might be waiting.”

• “Math has proven the existence of God, because it is absolute and without contradiction; but the devil must exist as well, because we cannot prove it.”

• “Eternal truths are ultimately invisible, and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions. Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression—in fact, nothing can prevent it from doing so.”

• “So you think that zero was there waiting for us when humans came into being, like the flowers and the stars? You should have more respect for human progress. We made the zero, through great pain and struggle.”

• “Attention is the beginning of devotion”

• “Sometimes the things you hate are the things you need”

• “The absurd does not liberate; it binds.”

• “THE WISDOM OF LIFE CONSISTS IN THE ELIMINATION OF NONESSENTIALS.”

• “In this example is the basic value proposition of Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”

• “It took courage, as it always does, to eliminate the nonessential.”

• “The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default.”

• “the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure.”

• “the more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.”

• “It is not just the number of choices that has increased exponentially, it is also the strength and number of outside influences on our decisions that has increased.”

• “Instead of reacting to the social pressures pulling you to go in a million directions, you will learn a way to reduce, simplify, and focus on what is absolutely essential by eliminating everything else.”

• “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”

• “One paradox of Essentialism is that Essentialists actually explore more options than their Nonessentialist counterparts.”

• “Remember, when we forfeit our right to choose, someone else will choose for us.”

• “There is tremendous freedom in learning that we can eliminate the nonessentials, that we are no longer controlled by other people’s agendas, and that we get to choose.”

• “That’s when I realized that in sacrificing my power to choose I had made a choice—a bad one.”

• “The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away—it can only be forgotten.”

• “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

• “MOST OF WHAT EXISTS IN THE UNIVERSE—OUR ACTIONS, AND ALL OTHER FORCES, RESOURCES, AND IDEAS—HAS LITTLE VALUE AND YIELDS LITTLE RESULT; ON THE OTHER HAND, A FEW THINGS WORK FANTASTICALLY WELL AND HAVE TREMENDOUS IMPACT.”

• “the Law of the Vital Few.”2 His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems.”

• “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.”9”

• “You have to look at every opportunity and say, ‘Well, no … I’m sorry. We’re not going to do a thousand different things that really won’t contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve.’ ”

• “A strategic position is not sustainable unless there are trade-offs with other positions.”

• “I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list, and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped away until work was all that was left.”

• “to be acted upon. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”7 Jim”

• “Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried. They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and thoughtfully.”

• “Ironically, in a Nonessentialist culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping, and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions. At best they are considered nice to have. At worst they are derided as evidence of weakness and wastefulness”

• “If somebody can’t make the meeting because of too much going on, that tells me either we’re doing something inefficiently or we need to hire more people.”

• “For some reason there is a false association with the word focus. As with choice, people tend to think of focus as a thing. Yes, focus is something we have. But focus is also something we do.”

• “Of course, nobody likes to be bored. But by abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.”

• “WHERE IS THE KNOWLEDGE WE HAVE LOST IN INFORMATION?”

• “As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.”

• “A LITTLE NONSENSE NOW AND THEN, IS CHERISHED BY THE WISEST MEN.”

• “We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.… Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it’s the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”2 In this he is correct. This idea that play is trivial stays with us as we reach adulthood and only becomes more ingrained as we enter the workplace. Sadly, not only do far too few companies and organizations foster play; many unintentionally undermine it. True, some companies and executives give lip service to the value of play in sparking creativity, yet most still fail to create the kind of playful culture that sparks true exploration. None of this should surprise us. Modern corporations were born out of the Industrial Revolution, when their entire reason for being was to achieve efficiency in the mass production of goods. Furthermore, these early managers looked to the military—a rather less-than-playful entity—for their inspiration (indeed, the language of the military is still strong in corporations today; we still often talk of employees being on the front lines, and the word company itself is a term for a military unit). While the industrial era is long behind us, those mores, structures, and systems continue to pervade most modern organizations. Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether”

• “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

• “Pushing oneself to the limit is easy! The real challenge for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.”

• “If you think you are so tough you can do anything I have a challenge for you. If you really want to do something hard: say no to an opportunity so you can take a nap.”

• “If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a no.”

• “So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is nonessential?”

• “So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is nonessential? One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenseless.”

• “Nonessentialists say yes because of feelings of social awkwardness and pressure. They say yes automatically, without thinking, often in pursuit of the rush one gets from having pleased someone. But Essentialists know that after the rush comes the pang of regret. They know they will soon feel bullied and resentful—both at the other person and at themselves.”

• “When people ask us to do something, we can confuse the request with our relationship with them. Sometimes they seem so interconnected, we forget that denying the request is not the same as denying the person.”

• “But part of living the way of the Essentialist is realizing respect is far more valuable than popularity in the long run.”

• “Saying no is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill. As with any ability, we start with limited experience.”

• “Saying no is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill. As with any ability, we start with limited experience. We are novices at “no.”

• “HALF OF THE TROUBLES OF THIS LIFE CAN BE TRACED TO SAYING YES TOO QUICKLY AND NOT SAYING NO SOON ENOUGH.”

• “nobody in the history of the world has washed their rental car!”

• “Abandoning a project that you’ve invested a lot in feels like you’ve wasted everything, and waste is something we’re told to avoid,”

• “It’s natural not to want to let go of what we wasted on a bad choice, but when we don’t, we doom ourselves to keep wasting even more.”

• “Instead of trying to budget your time on the basis of existing commitments, assume that all bets are off. All previous commitments are gone. Then begin from scratch, asking which you would add today.”

• “In a reverse pilot you test whether removing an initiative or activity will have any negative consequences.”

• “In other words, a good film editor makes it hard not to see what’s important because she eliminates everything but the elements that absolutely need to be there.”

• “It’s true that doing less can be harder, both in art and in life.”

• “The best surgeon is not the one who makes the most incisions; similarly, the best editors can sometimes be the least intrusive, the most restrained.”

• “NO IS A COMPLETE SENTENCE.”

• “But what most people don’t realize is that the problem is not just that the boundaries have been blurred; it’s that the boundary of work has edged insidiously into family territory. It is hard to imagine executives in most companies who would be comfortable with employees bringing their children to work on Monday morning, yet they seem to have no problem expecting their employees to come into the office or to work on a project on a Saturday or Sunday.”

• “Boundaries are a little like the walls of a sandcastle. The second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down.”

• “Remember, forcing these people to solve their own problems is equally beneficial for you and for them.”

• “when we don’t set clear boundaries in our lives we can end up imprisoned by the limits others have set for us.”

• “The only thing we can expect (with any great certainty) is the unexpected. Therefore, we can either wait for the moment and react to it or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.”

• “Instead of trying to improve every aspect of the facility he needs to identify the “Herbie”: the part of the process that is slower relative to every other part of the plant”

• “Being good with a hammer, the Nonessentialist thinks everything is a nail. Thus he applies more and more pressure, but this ends up only adding more friction and frustration. Indeed, in some situations the harder you push on someone the harder he or she will push back.”

• “When we don’t know what we’re really trying to achieve, all change is arbitrary.”

• “Removing obstacles does not have to be hard or take a superhuman effort. Instead, we can start small. It’s kind of like dislodging a boulder at the top of a hill. All it takes is a small shove, then momentum will naturally build.”

• “Each time a young person was recognized and commended for doing something good, he or she was that much more motivated to continue doing good until, eventually, doing good became natural and effortless.”

• “of all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress.”

• “It is the process Pixar uses on their movies. Instead of starting with a script, they start with storyboards—or what have been described as the comic book version of a movie. They try ideas out and see what works. They do this in small cycles hundreds of times. Then they put out a movie to small groups of people to give them advance feedback.”

• “We don’t actually finish our films, we release them.”

• “ROUTINE, IN AN INTELLIGENT MAN, IS A SIGN OF AMBITION.”

• “This power of a routine grows out of our brain’s ability to take over entirely until the process becomes fully unconscious.”

• “There is a difference between losing and being beaten. Being beaten means they are better than you. They are faster, stronger, and more talented.” To Larry, losing means something else. It means you lost focus. It means you didn’t concentrate on what was essential.”

• “Multitasking itself is not the enemy of Essentialism; pretending we can “multifocus” is.”

• “Suppose you are drinking a cup of tea. When you hold your cup, you may like to breathe in, to bring your mind back to your body, and you become fully present. And when you are truly there, something else is also there—life, represented by the cup of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of these afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea. That is the moment of happiness, and of peace.” Pay attention through the day”

• “BEWARE THE BARRENNESS OF A BUSY LIFE.”

• “Every choice we make to pursue the essential and eliminate the nonessential builds on itself, making that choice more and more habitual until it becomes virtually second nature.”

• “I continue to discover almost daily that I can do less and less—in order to contribute more.”

• “If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness.”

• “The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpations, but by the actions of the individual. The strongest city, the largest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person. In that dire moment of uncertainty, that person’s decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world. But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might make. It is almost enough to make me believe in Destiny.”

• “I think men who lust for power are capable of almost anything.”

• “When you reach my age, Amara, people show themselves to you very clearly. They write their intentions and beliefs through their actions, their lies.”

• “But the power to shake mountains does little good if the knife is already buried in one’s throat”

• “There are some people who will never understand what loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course, but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside. They couldn’t imagine a world where something like that was real.”

• “Courage.” Tavi sighed. “As near as I can figure it, all courage gets you is more of a beating than if you’d run away.”

• “There’s two kinds of bad men in the world. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways for a man to go bad, but when you get right down to it, there’s only about two kinds of men who will hurt others with forethought. Premeditation. Men that don’t figure there’s anyone else alive who matters but them. And men who figure that there’s something that matters more than anyone’s life. Even their own.” He shook his head. “First one is common enough. Petty, small. They’re everywhere. People who just don’t give a scorched crow about anyone else. Mostly, the bad they do doesn’t amount to much. “The second kind is like your patriserus. People who hold something dear above their own lives, above anyone else’s. They’ll fight to protect it and kill to protect it, and the whole time they’ll be thinking to themselves that it has to be done. That it’s the right thing to do.” Bernard glanced up at her and said, “Dangerous those. Very dangerous.”

• “Sometimes,” Bernard rumbled, “the only smart thing to do is nothing. Sometimes you just have to be still and see how events begin to unfold before you move. Be patient.”

• “If the beginning of wisdom is in realizing that one knows nothing, then the beginning of understanding is in realizing that all things exist in accord with a single truth: large things are made of smaller things. Drops of ink are shaped into letters, letters form words, words form sentences, and sentences combine to express thought. So it is with the growth of plants that spring from seeds, as well as with walls built of many stones. So it is with mankind, as the customs and traditions of our progenitors blend together to form the foundation for our own cities, history, and way of life. Be they dead stone, living flesh, or rolling sea; be they idle times or events of world-shattering proportion, market days, or desperate battles, to this law, all things hold: Large things are made from small things. Significance is cumulative—but not always obvious.”

• “Don’t struggle to heal your wounds. Just pour time into your heart and wait”

• “you’ve been unable to change a bad situation, even after many attempts, you should”

• “If you’ve been unable to change a bad situation, even after many attempts, you should change how you look at the situation”

• “Awareness is inherently pure, like the open sky. Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky, but they can never pollute it.”

• “The martial path was lonely. It was a source of great happiness if one found a confidant.”

• “The Azure Yang Lord’s uninhibited life was filled with ups and down. Having felt both extreme happiness and sadness, he knew how difficult it was to earn happiness. If he could make this moment last forever, that would be a blissful matter… However, be it the Azure Yang Lord or the ancient Great Empress, they knew that these days were not going to last.”

• “Warriors had to suffer hardship and experience numerous life and death encounters. If they were not careful, they would lose their lives. They had to restrain their desires and endure lonely decades of reclusive training. Wasn’t all this for them to lead a free life and do as they pleased when their power succeeded on reaching unprecedented heights!? Everything in the world depended on one’s preference. To do as the heart pleased!”

• “The ways of the world are full of vicissitudes, and in it, there is the grief at separation and joy in union, the suffering of life and death. No matter how thick a history book is, it would not be able to record everything down. However, it is such infinite matters of the past that can pass by with a finger snap. In one’s old age, while looking back at the past, only then would you feel like everything was ephemeral.”

• “The further he walked, the tinier he felt.”

• “Against the vast cosmos, the lives of people were like ants. It was like how bacteria did not know what it meant for the first and last day of the month, or how mole crickets did not know the seasons. What was a mortal’s life to the Universe? Yi Yun did not want to remain like a speck of dust in the Universe.”

• “In a warrior’s world, we may have the power to cause great destruction, have long lifespans, and are able to lead extravagant lives, but the pressure is intense. Be it life-and-death trials or breakthroughs that require great risks, or the sense of urgency of being killed by someone else at any moment in time, it forces us to continuously forge ahead.” “The accumulation of all these pressure naturally need an opportunity for it to be released.”

• “Before one’s heart reduced to mediocrity, Great Dao lies within one’s heart!”

• “Those without sufficient strength but can bear disgrace and a heavy burden are people who I appreciate as well.”

• “Time is like a flowing river. Everything and anything can be washed away by that river.”

• “Everyone had their own time, but time treated everyone equally.”

• “Were destruction and finality the end? Matter in the Universe could not remain eternal. They would eventually proceed towards destruction, including the Universe. But what happened after destruction? Could it be that all that was left was eternal ‘nothingness’? Everything in the world underwent birth and death. A drop of water could evaporate and become part of a cloud before condensing into new drops of rain. Plants would wither, but the fruits that they bore could give rise to seeds. Mortals would die of age, but babies would grow up into adults. Stars could be destroyed, but new stars would eventually be born… Everything in the world underwent a cycle, so it definitely included the Universe. The destruction of the Universe was the beginnings of a new Universe. It was just that the cycle was immensely long that it was beyond the imagination of mere mortals. New Universe… Yi Yun suddenly seemed to realize something. What were the beginnings of the Universe? Dao begets One, One begets Two… Before Yin-Yang and Space-time was Chaos! Rebirth after destruction was Chaos and Major Destruction respectively. They were both two Great Dao of Supremacy! Why were there two Great Dao of Supremacy? They might be like Yin-Yang, Space-time, Water-Fire, just two sides of the Universe. The two could supplement each other and not a single one was dispensable.”

• “But if a warrior does not have any aspirations, he won’t be able to go far either.”

• “To what end do we practice martial arts for? If we can’t depend on the sword, so what about death? One’s true richness of heart is not to be annihilated!”

• “Helping a man once gains gratitude, but not helping that man again gains hatred.”

• “grinding a chopper will not hold up the work of cutting firewood”

• “As the saying goes, he who gets other’s kindness but does not repay is not a gentleman.”

• “History changes erratically. Time is enough to wipe away many things.”

• “Chaos in the world leads to the suffering of all life, but it is something some people are willing to see. Heroes are born in difficult times.”

• “Humans were warlike, to begin with. It was common among humans to fight unceasingly for their interests. Furthermore, there were some perverse people who wanted revenge on the world. Such people were even more dangerous. There was no limit to what they would do. Yi Yun knew that there was evil deeply rooted in human nature. However, he was not a person who would bemoan the state of the universe and mankind, much less the kind who would question life after seeing the ugly nature of humans and eventually decide to destroy the entire world in a crazy fit. He was only Yi Yun, an ordinary person that pursued the martial path, wanting his life to escape the cycle of samsara.”

• “When one postures to impress a girl, his failure becomes all the more foolish.”

• “When warriors took lives or destroyed an item, or even shattered a world, they could not avoid violence. Only time could turn everything into dust in an infinitely calm manner simply by passing. It was silent from beginning to end. Time was the most unique power of destruction. Yi”

• “A man who loses position and influence may be subjected to much indignity. It’s all fated…”

• “He who understands the times is a wise man.”

• “Yi Yun refused to believe that someone would forgo their lives for a master who had not won the hearts of people.”

• “We warriors have been cultivating our entire lives. What was it for? It’s not to enjoy riches or sex. Nor is it about being placed on a pedestal while enslaving those beneath us! We cultivate to fight against our fate! We do not wish to to let Samsara run its course, so we cultivate for years! Our martial heritage has been passed down for millions of years, billions of years, and will be so for trillions of years! It’s not for us to kneel down to beg for mercy after gaining mastery. With the backbone broken, there’s no way one can straighten one’s back.”

• “The Heavenly Dao’s evolution is unending. Creation and Destruction are interchangeable, forming a complete circle. Be it life or a universe, they have formation, existence, disintegration, and emptiness; birth, aging, illness, and death. You wanted to devour the Heavenly Dao, robbing and changing the fate of the universe. You wanted to empower yourself by initiating the deaths of millions; hence, you were destined to be abandoned by the Heavenly Dao.”

• “Legends were typically like this. They would not be eclipsed with the passage of time, but instead, they became histories that one tried to live up to.”

• “Life, from lifeforms as large as towering trees to bugs as small as ants, the reason for all they do is for the continuation of their bloodline.”

• “In this Sinkhole that was filled with despair, a bunch of seniors were forging ahead bearing the burdens, so as to hold up the sky for the young. Although these seniors had their backs hunched from the pressures of time, to the point of not being able to bear the weight any further, that was already sufficient, no matter how tiny that piece of sky they held up was. They had already done everything they could have done.”

• “The crests and troughs of life are all but ephemeral mists. How nice if reunion and separation were fixed in place of that first meeting. A thousand years pass and happiness a certainty, but how much was sadness in exchange?”

• “Every artist has thousands of bad drawings in them and the only way to get rid of them is to draw them out. - Chuck Jones”

• “I spent years trying to behave “appropriately” so that other people would accept me, because underneath I felt like my true self was unworthy and underserving. Once I unravelled this ball I realized that I was just as worthy and deserving as anyone else, and I could start being myself—my true self.”

• “Realize that 9 times out of 10, when you’re worried about what other people think - it’s a projection. You’re projecting your own fears and your own internalized self-judgment onto other people. You’re pinning on them what you yourself think. So when we take responsibility for letting go of other people’s judgments we empower ourselves to stop being harsh and judgmental with ourselves too. Because ultimately they go hand-in-hand.”

• “Often when we get lost in worrying about what everyone else thinks it’s because we’re existing in a state of perpetual comparison. We look at what everyone else is doing and think that unless we’re doing similarly we failed”

• “For me I think the lack of “off leash” non-self-regulation time also ties directly into the “revenge bedtime procrastination” phenom. I often find myself doing practically nothing or the mindless scrolling even though I am physically and mentally tired and WANT to sleep, but my brain is like “I HAVENT HAD A RUN AROUND TODAY WE MUST STAY UP”

• “The absurd does not liberate; it binds.”

• “The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.”

• “In this example is the basic value proposition of Essentialism: only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”

• “It took courage, as it always does, to eliminate the nonessential.”

• “The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default.”

• “the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure.”

• “the more choices we are forced to make, the more the quality of our decisions deteriorates.”

• “It is not just the number of choices that has increased exponentially, it is also the strength and number of outside influences on our decisions that has increased.”

• “Instead of reacting to the social pressures pulling you to go in a million directions, you will learn a way to reduce, simplify, and focus on what is absolutely essential by eliminating everything else.”

• “If I didn’t already own this, how much would I spend to buy it?”

• “One paradox of Essentialism is that Essentialists actually explore more options than their Nonessentialist counterparts.”

• “Remember, when we forfeit our right to choose, someone else will choose for us.”

• “There is tremendous freedom in learning that we can eliminate the nonessentials, that we are no longer controlled by other people’s agendas, and that we get to choose.”

• “That’s when I realized that in sacrificing my power to choose I had made a choice—a bad one.”

• “The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away—it can only be forgotten.”

• “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

• “Most of what exists in the universe—our actions, and all other forces, resources, and ideas—has little value and yields little result; on the other hand, a few things work fantastically well and have tremendous impact.”

• “the Law of the Vital Few. His observation was that you could massively improve the quality of a product by resolving a tiny fraction of the problems.”

• “You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.

• “You have to look at every opportunity and say, ‘Well, no … I’m sorry. We’re not going to do a thousand different things that really won’t contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve.’ ”

• “A strategic position is not sustainable unless there are trade-offs with other positions.”

• “I didn’t start out with the goal of devoting all of myself to my job. It crept in over time. Each year that went by, slight modifications became the new normal. First I spent a half-hour on Sunday organizing my e-mail, to-do list, and calendar to make Monday morning easier. Then I was working a few hours on Sunday, then all day. My boundaries slipped away until work was all that was left.”

• “to be acted upon. As economist Thomas Sowell wrote: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”7 Jim”

• “Trade-offs are not something to be ignored or decried. They are something to be embraced and made deliberately, strategically, and thoughtfully.”

• “Ironically, in a Nonessentialist culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping, and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions. At best they are considered nice to have.”

• “Ironically, in a Nonessentialist culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping, and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions. At best they are considered nice to have. At worst they are derided as evidence of weakness and wastefulness”

• “If somebody can’t make the meeting because of too much going on, that tells me either we’re doing something inefficiently or we need to hire more people.”

• “For some reason there is a false association with the word focus. As with choice, people tend to think of focus as a thing. Yes, focus is something we have. But focus is also something”

• “For some reason there is a false association with the word focus. As with choice, people tend to think of focus as a thing. Yes, focus is something we have. But focus is also something we do.”

• “Of course, nobody likes to be bored. But by abolishing any chance of being bored we have also lost the time we used to have to think and process.”

• “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

• “As someone once said to me, the faintest pencil is better than the strongest memory.”

• “A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.”

• “We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education, and it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.… Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it’s the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardizing in the way we educate our children and ourselves.”2 In this he is correct. This idea that play is trivial stays with us as we reach adulthood and only becomes more ingrained as we enter the workplace. Sadly, not only do far too few companies and organizations foster play; many unintentionally undermine it. True, some companies and executives give lip service to the value of play in sparking creativity, yet most still fail to create the kind of playful culture that sparks true exploration. None of this should surprise us. Modern corporations were born out of the Industrial Revolution, when their entire reason for being was to achieve efficiency in the mass production of goods. Furthermore, these early managers looked to the military—a rather less-than-playful entity—for their inspiration (indeed, the language of the military is still strong in corporations today; we still often talk of employees being on the front lines, and the word company itself is a term for a military unit). While the industrial era is long behind us, those mores, structures, and systems continue to pervade most modern organizations. Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether”

• “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”

• “Pushing oneself to the limit is easy! The real challenge for the person who thrives on challenges is not to work hard.”

• “If you think you are so tough you can do anything I have a challenge for you. If you really want to do something hard: say no to an opportunity so you can take a nap.”

• “If the answer isn’t a definite yes then it should be a no.”

• “So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is nonessential?”

• “So why is it so hard in the moment to dare to choose what is essential over what is nonessential? One simple answer is we are unclear about what is essential. When this happens we become defenseless.”

• “Nonessentialists say yes because of feelings of social awkwardness and pressure. They say yes automatically, without thinking, often in pursuit of the rush one gets from having pleased someone. But Essentialists know that after the rush comes the pang of regret. They know they will soon feel bullied and resentful—both at the other person and at themselves.”

• “When people ask us to do something, we can confuse the request with our relationship with them. Sometimes they seem so interconnected, we forget that denying the request is not the same as denying the person.”

• “But part of living the way of the Essentialist is realizing respect is far more valuable than popularity in the long run.”

• “Saying no is its own leadership capability. It is not just a peripheral skill. As with any ability, we start with limited experience. We are novices at “no.”

• “Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.”

• “nobody in the history of the world has washed their rental car!”

• “Abandoning a project that you’ve invested a lot in feels like you’ve wasted everything, and waste is something we’re told to avoid,”

• “It’s natural not to want to let go of what we wasted on a bad choice, but when we don’t, we doom ourselves to keep wasting even more.”

• “Instead of trying to budget your time on the basis of existing commitments, assume that all bets are off. All previous commitments are gone. Then begin from scratch, asking which you would add today.”

• “In a reverse pilot you test whether removing an initiative or activity will have any negative consequences.”

• “In other words, a good film editor makes it hard not to see what’s important because she eliminates everything but the elements that absolutely need to be there.”

• “It’s true that doing less can be harder, both in art and in life.”

• “The best surgeon is not the one who makes the most incisions; similarly, the best editors can sometimes be the least intrusive, the most restrained.”

• “No is a complete sentence.”

• “But what most people don’t realize is that the problem is not just that the boundaries have been blurred; it’s that the boundary of work has edged insidiously into family territory. It is hard to imagine executives in most companies who would be comfortable with employees bringing their children to work on Monday morning, yet they seem to have no problem expecting their employees to come into the office or to work on a project on a Saturday or Sunday.”

• “Boundaries are a little like the walls of a sandcastle. The second we let one fall over, the rest of them come crashing down.”

• “Remember, forcing these people to solve their own problems is equally beneficial for you and for them.”

• “When we don’t set clear boundaries in our lives we can end up imprisoned by the limits others have set for us.”

• “The only thing we can expect (with any great certainty) is the unexpected. Therefore, we can either wait for the moment and react to it or we can prepare. We can create a buffer.”

• “Instead of trying to improve every aspect of the facility he needs to identify the “Herbie”: the part of the process that is slower relative to every other part of the plant”

• “Being good with a hammer, the Nonessentialist thinks everything is a nail. Thus he applies more and more pressure, but this ends up only adding more friction and frustration. Indeed, in some situations the harder you push on someone the harder he or she will push back.”

• “When we don’t know what we’re really trying to achieve, all change is arbitrary.”

• “Removing obstacles does not have to be hard or take a superhuman effort. Instead, we can start small. It’s kind of like dislodging a boulder at the top of a hill. All it takes is a small shove, then momentum will naturally build.”

• “Each time a young person was recognized and commended for doing something good, he or she was that much more motivated to continue doing good until, eventually, doing good became natural and effortless.”

• “of all forms of human motivation the most effective one is progress.”

• “It is the process Pixar uses on their movies. Instead of starting with a script, they start with storyboards—or what have been described as the comic book version of a movie. They try ideas out and see what works. They do this in small cycles hundreds of times. Then they put out a movie to small groups of people to give them advance feedback.”

• “We don’t actually finish our films, we release them.”

• “Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.”

• “This power of a routine grows out of our brain’s ability to take over entirely until the process becomes fully unconscious.”

• “There is a difference between losing and being beaten. Being beaten means they are better than you. They are faster, stronger, and more talented.” To Larry, losing means something else. It means you lost focus. It means you didn’t concentrate on what was essential.”

• “Multitasking itself is not the enemy of Essentialism; pretending we can “multifocus” is.”

• “Suppose you are drinking a cup of tea. When you hold your cup, you may like to breathe in, to bring your mind back to your body, and you become fully present. And when you are truly there, something else is also there—life, represented by the cup of tea. In that moment you are real, and the cup of tea is real. You are not lost in the past, in the future, in your projects, in your worries. You are free from all of these afflictions. And in that state of being free, you enjoy your tea. That is the moment of happiness, and of peace.” Pay attention through the day”

• “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.”

• “Every choice we make to pursue the essential and eliminate the nonessential builds on itself, making that choice more and more habitual until it becomes virtually second nature.”

• “I continue to discover almost daily that I can do less and less—in order to contribute more.”

• “If one’s life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness.”

• “The course of history is determined not by battles, by sieges, or usurpations, but by the actions of the individual. The strongest city, the largest army is, at its most basic level, a collection of individuals. Their decisions, their passions, their foolishness, and their dreams shape the years to come. If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that all too often the fate of armies, of cities, of entire realms rests upon the actions of one person. In that dire moment of uncertainty, that person’s decision, good or bad, right or wrong, big or small, can unwittingly change the world. But history can be quite the slattern. One never knows who that person is, where he might be, or what decision he might make. It is almost enough to make me believe in Destiny.”

• “I think men who lust for power are capable of almost anything.”

• “When you reach my age, Amara, people show themselves to you very clearly. They write their intentions and beliefs through their actions, their lies.”

• “But the power to shake mountains does little good if the knife is already buried in one’s throat”

• “There are some people who will never understand what loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course, but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside. They couldn’t imagine a world where something like that was real.”

• “Courage.” Tavi sighed. “As near as I can figure it, all courage gets you is more of a beating than if you’d run away.”

• “There’s two kinds of bad men in the world. I mean, there’s all kinds of ways for a man to go bad, but when you get right down to it, there’s only about two kinds of men who will hurt others with forethought. Premeditation. Men that don’t figure there’s anyone else alive who matters but them. And men who figure that there’s something that matters more than anyone’s life. Even their own.” He shook his head. “First one is common enough. Petty, small. They’re everywhere. People who just don’t give a scorched crow about anyone else. Mostly, the bad they do doesn’t amount to much. “The second kind is like your patriserus. People who hold something dear above their own lives, above anyone else’s. They’ll fight to protect it and kill to protect it, and the whole time they’ll be thinking to themselves that it has to be done. That it’s the right thing to do.” Bernard glanced up at her and said, “Dangerous those. Very dangerous.”

• “Sometimes,” Bernard rumbled, “the only smart thing to do is nothing. Sometimes you just have to be still and see how events begin to unfold before you move. Be patient.”

• “If the beginning of wisdom is in realizing that one knows nothing, then the beginning of understanding is in realizing that all things exist in accord with a single truth: large things are made of smaller things. Drops of ink are shaped into letters, letters form words, words form sentences, and sentences combine to express thought. So it is with the growth of plants that spring from seeds, as well as with walls built of many stones. So it is with mankind, as the customs and traditions of our progenitors blend together to form the foundation for our own cities, history, and way of life. Be they dead stone, living flesh, or rolling sea; be they idle times or events of world-shattering proportion, market days, or desperate battles, to this law, all things hold: Large things are made from small things. Significance is cumulative—but not always obvious.”

• “Don’t struggle to heal your wounds. Just pour time into your heart and wait”

• “If you’ve been unable to change a bad situation, even after many attempts, you should change how you look at the situation”

• “Awareness is inherently pure, like the open sky. Stress, irritation, and anger can temporarily cloud the sky, but they can never pollute it.”

• “Having critics means what you’re doing is getting people’s attention”

• “To be happy, it’s not necessary to expend great effort so we get somewhere else. Instead, relax into the present moment while finding humor in your life. With humor, life becomes light and leisurely. And laughter always brings people to experience openness and joy”

• “Humor opens closed hearts.”

• “as frequently as you can as a family. Although we see our family every day, we don’t really get to be with”

• “Although we see our family every day, we don’t really get to be with one another. A change in environment can do wonders and can bring families closer. A good family trip can prevent divorce. What makes music beautiful is the distance between one note and another. What makes speech eloquent is the appropriate pause between words. From time to time we should take a breath and notice the silence between sounds. When you have to make an important decision,”

• “The world will keep turning even without you. Let go of the idea that your way is the only way, that you are the only one who can make it happen”

• “Therefore, much like a mirror reflects what is before it without judgment or identification with the image, simply reflect the negative emotion—let’s say it’s anger—and watch dispassionately. You will see the anger slowly changing shape, either revealing a deeper layer of emotion or disappearing on its own. If another layer of emotion is revealing itself, attend to it the way you did with your anger.”

• “pure attention without judgment is not only the highest form of human intelligence, but also the expression of love”

• “No person can be found Who has been, is, or will be Only criticized Or only praised.”

• “When someone criticizes another, you might think he deserves it. But if you look more closely, you’ll see that the critic is complaining because he did not get his way.”

• “As we resist, we are in constant motion trying to adjust, and yet we still remain unhappy about what is”

• “When you cannot control even your own mind, what makes you think you can control others?”

• “Whether it is an object, a thought, or a feeling, if it has emerged out of emptiness, it will soon change its form and eventually retreat back to emptiness. Seekers in search of the eternal Truth must look beyond its impermanent nature and become aware of “that” which knows impermanence”

• “Spirituality must be practiced not just in solitude but also among people. Open up to people around you and feel connected. This is the true challenge of spiritual practice.”

• “Feelings are often born from a matrix of conditions beyond your control. Just like you can’t control the weather, or your boss’s mood, you can’t control the feelings in your body. They are just passing through, like clouds in the sky. They, too, dissipate on their own. But if you take them too seriously and start internalizing them as part of your identity, then you will resuscitate them every time you think about the past. Remember that you are neither your feelings nor the story your mind tells about you to make sense of them. You are the vast silence that knows of their emergence and their disappearance”

• “Of all the words that pour out of our mouths every day, how many are really ours, and how many are borrowed from others?”

• “Everything in this universe is evanescent. Because it is evanescent, it is also precious. Spend this precious moment wisely and beautifully. The mind cannot have two thoughts at once. See if you can think two thoughts at exactly the same time. Well? Is it possible? We can be consumed by anger for a long time without realizing we have been angry. Similarly, we are easily lost in thought without knowing we have been thinking. Even when we are awake we are no different from a sleepwalker. We do things without the awareness of doing them. Just because our eyes are open does not mean we are awake. Being awake means that”

• “When I gaze upon water, I become water. When I look at a flower, I become the flower. The flower riding on the water, yippee!”

• “A long time ago, there was only one mind, which became bored by being alone for so long. So it decided to split into two. But since the two knew they were originally one, playing together was not much fun— as if playing both sides of a chess game. So the two minds agreed to forget where they came from; they pretended not to know each other. As time passed, they also forgot about their agreement. They forgot they were actually one and the same. This is the condition of our existence. We forget that we are originally from one mind.”

• “Life is like theater. You are assigned a role. If you don’t like the role, keep in mind that you have the power to re-create the role you want”

• “something I should have known all along. When we’re first given a job, especially one we’ve been working toward for a long time, it’s easy to become overly enthusiastic, as we are eager to prove ourselves. But in our excitement, we make the mistake of equating our own eagerness with effectiveness”

• “When we’re first given a job, especially one we’ve been working toward for a long time, it’s easy to become overly enthusiastic, as we are eager to prove ourselves. But in our excitement, we make the mistake of equating our own eagerness with effectiveness. Getting the job done well is more important than one’s feelings of doing a good job. It takes wisdom to discern that these two are not always related. In some cases, one’s zealous efforts can get in the way of achieving the desired outcome, especially if one is unable to see the needs of the others working toward it together”

• “The world notices your efforts more quickly than you think”

• “It is important that you work hard, but don’t be enamored of the feeling of working hard. If you are drunk on that feeling, then you care less about the actual work than about how you appear to others to be working hard.”

• “A person does not live the way he says he would. He lives the way he has been living”

• “A vow to help others can summon immense energy from within.”

• “When you are making a decision, try to assess how many people it will benefit. If it satisfies only your ego and unnecessarily hurts many, then it is the wrong decision”

• “Isn’t it better to be happy together than to be right alone?”

• “One lesson of maturity is that we should not take our thoughts too seriously, and must learn to curb our ego and see the bigger picture.”

• “Criticism without a solution is merely an inflation of the critic’s ego.”

• “When you ask a question and there is no response, then that is the answer.”

• “Don’t try to make it perfect. Instead, make it interesting!”

• “After mastering eighteen levels of kung fu, you can hurt someone with the flick of a finger. But if you go on to master all thirty-six levels, you choose to retreat when the weak foolishly come to fight”

• “From this experience I realized that the art of maintaining a good relationship can be compared to sitting by a fireplace. If we sit too close for too long, we become hot and possibly burned. If we sit too far away, we cannot feel the warmth. Similarly, no matter how well we get along with someone, if we stick too close without building in some personal space, we soon feel trapped and burned out; it is easy to take the relationship for granted and feel resentful about not having enough privacy and independence. On the other hand, if we put in too little effort to stay in touch with friends and family, we can’t feel the warmth of their love. Striking a balance is key”

• “cup was full. Perplexed, Maeng demanded to know what he was doing. “You seem to know that too much tea will ruin the floor,” the master answered, “but how do you not know that too much knowledge will ruin one’s character?”

• “If you lower your head, you won’t bump into trouble.”

• “Do not expect others to follow your way. When things always go your way, it is easy to become arrogant.”

• “The end of a sushi roll, with the filling sticking out, is often tastier than a piece sliced neatly from the middle. Someone slick and well-put-together can come across as cold and alienating, while an average guy without pretense is more genuine and attractive”

• “People say hurtful things because they themselves have been hurt.”

• “If you wish to communicate effectively with others, better to describe what you are feeling rather than go on the offensive. For instance, say, “I am very sad to hear that,” not, “Why do you always make me sad?”

• “When you criticize someone, see if you are doing so out of envy. Your criticism reveals more about yourself than you realize. Even if you are correct, people still may find you unappealing. If you wish to communicate effectively with others, better to describe what you are feeling rather than go on the offensive. For instance, say, “I am very sad to hear that,” not, “Why do you always make me sad?” You”

• “You want people to hear you rather than have to defend themselves from you”

• “When blinded by anger, we make choices we later regret. Leaving the room before the bridge is burned is a sign of maturity”

• “The best revenge is love”

• “Paper wrapped around incense smells of incense, and string binding fish smells of fish.”

• “The best way to hide your wealth is to give it away. If you are generous with your wealth, the money that would have disappeared sooner or later”

• “Whether we like it or not, we are all connected, and it is unthinkable to be happy all by oneself.”

• “Inside of us there is a steep mountain of fear and a deep river of grief. But there is also the compassionate eye witnessing your inner landscape. May you find your inner witness, the source of freedom and healing.”

• “Does the person you hate deserve to be carried around in your heart?”

• “Humans are like mirrors: We reflect each other.”

• “When you lower yourself, the world elevates you. When you elevate yourself, the world lowers you”

• “When you keep clashing with someone, it may be the world’s way of asking you to look closely at yourself. When you don’t like someone, try to figure out what it is you don’t like; see whether you have a similar flaw within yourself. The flaw that you immediately notice in someone you meet is probably a flaw of yours, too. If you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t have noticed it so quickly.”

• “For spiritual practitioners, relationships are the final test. Even if you have awakened to your enlightened nature, there is still further to go in your spiritual journey if you’re not living harmoniously with others”

• “Demonstrations of love are small, compared with the great thing that is hidden behind them”

• “Love is like an uninvited guest. Love will come when it wants to. Love will leave when you ask more of it”

• “If you look for love, in pursuit of what it can give you, it will hide itself. If you ask love to arrive because you are now ready, it will skip your door. Love is like an uninvited guest. Love will come when it wants to. Love will leave when you ask more of it. If you attempt to find a love that meets certain criteria, your new love may also make certain demands of you. Drop your demands quickly when love knocks on your door. Love is warm and freeing. It is innocent, like a child without a hidden agenda. We”

• “We can determine how close we are to someone by asking, “Can I act like a little kid in front of that person?” When we love someone, we feel like a little kid in our heart”

• “Why can’t I give her a gift and tell her I love her?” Your words and gifts will mean more to her when she is ready. Love her, not your feelings.”

• “Love needs to be balanced. If you like him more than he likes you, give him time and space to catch up. It is important to hold back your emotions when your feelings are not in balance with his.”

• “I want you to know that I love your ordinariness, because I, too, am ordinary. The truth is, we are all ordinary”

• “No matter how famous or beautiful one is, no matter how much money or power one has, no matter how many wonderful accomplishments one has had, we all have our share of setbacks, heartbreak, and loss. We have to face challenges we have no control over. Loneliness and the fear of death will accompany us to our final days. Everyone is on the same treacherous journey of life’s tainted glory.”

• “When we are in love, we like to do nice things for the one we love. But it is equally important to refrain from doing unnecessary things. We often overlook that part”

• “We like to get involved in other people’s business, thinking we are doing so for them. We offer unsolicited help and interfere with their lives. We take away their power and make them feel incapable. This stems from our desire for control and recognition. It has little to do with love”

• “Moreover, when I meet someone new, do I make an effort to see who he is beneath his social markers? Or am I reducing people to their background and failing to see who they really are? I am reminded again that anyone, including those young boys, can be our spiritual teacher if we are willing to open our hearts to them.”

• “Life is like a slice of pizza. It looks delicious in an advertisement, but when we actually have it, it is not as good as we imagined. If you envy someone’s life, remember the pizza in the ad. It always looks better than it is.”

• “Always go with your first choice if you can afford it. It is better than a life filled with regrets.”

• “It makes sense that Scandinavia should be famous for furniture design, since people in a cold climate spend more time inside their homes. Similarly, Italy is renowned for designer apparel; it makes sense that people in a warm climate should pay more attention to how they appear outdoors. Where you live shapes you. Do you live in a place conducive to the pursuit of your dreams”

• “The biggest obstacle to learning is pretending to know even when you don’t. It is better to admit you don’t know something; if you pretend, you have to act as if you knew all along. It is easier to learn when you set aside your pride and are honest. The compassionate gaze of the wounded soul is”

• “if we are brutally honest with ourselves, most things we do for others are in fact for ourselves. We pray for the well-being of our family because we need them to be around. We shed tears when our partner dies because of the impending loneliness. We sacrifice for our children in the hope that they will grow up the way we want. Unless we become enlightened like the Buddha or Jesus, it is difficult to abandon our deeprooted preoccupation with ourselves.”

• “Stop worrying about what others think and just do what your heart wishes. Do not crowd your mind with “what ifs.” Uncomplicate your life and own up to your desires. Only when you are happy can you help to make the world a happier place”

• “A majestic tree is the first to be cut down and used for lumber, whereas a modest one lives on. Likewise, a real master conceals his virtue and never boasts of his excellence”

• “If someone shares his problems with you, don’t feel the need to have the solutions. Just listen sincerely. This is often more helpful.”

• “A foolish person thinks, “I already know that.” He keeps anything new from coming into his mind. A wise person thinks, “I don’t know the whole story.” She opens herself up to even greater wisdom. An ordinary person mainly notices particular things he likes or dislikes. A wise person notices both the whole and the particulars. When you share your problems with your friends, you do not expect them to have the solutions. You are just grateful they are there for you and willing to listen. If someone shares his problems with you, don’t feel the need to have the solutions. Just listen sincerely. This is often more helpful. When”

• “When you share your problems with your friends, you do not expect them to have the solutions. You are just grateful they are there for you and willing to listen. If someone shares his problems with you, don’t feel the need to have the solutions. Just listen sincerely. This is often more helpful. When I look deeply within myself, I realize what it is that I really want from others: attentive ears that listen to what I am saying, kind words that acknowledge my existence and worth, gentle eyes that accept my flaws and insecurities. I resolve to be that person for those around me”

• “When our greed is awakened, we are cheated”

• “The reward for someone who works hard is more work.”

• “If we’re quick to grant a favor, then people quickly forget their gratitude. If we grant a favor with several conditions, then people express immense gratitude”

• “According to the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha makes the prophesy about his disciples because he has a supernatural ability to foresee when they would achieve the final stage of buddhahood. But I do not think they automatically attained enlightenment because they received the Buddha’s prophesy; I think it had a lot to do with the Buddha’s faith in them, which motivated them to work harder to accomplish what their teacher predicted. Like Ms. Lee’s words to me, the Buddha’s trusting words and his loving gaze transformed the lives of his five hundred disciples. One word of encouragement, said with kindness and hope, can change a person’s future, the way it did for the five hundred disciples and for me”

• “No matter how famous, powerful, or rich some people are, they are not very different from anyone else. We long for deep connection and unconditional acceptance. We have the same insecurities and need for approval. There is no reason to feel inferior”

• “A restaurant specializing in a few good dishes is more likely to develop a good reputation than one with a lengthy menu.”

• “When it comes to learning a new skill, there are two kinds of people. One kind prefers to first study the typewriter, while the other starts by pounding on the keys. One kind likes to first master the grammar of a foreign language, while the other learns in the trenches, using body language if they must. Generally speaking, the second type tends to learn faster than the first, because the latter is not afraid of making mistakes. There is no such thing as being completely prepared. Life is an adventure, through which we learn and mature. Of course, we must consider all our options carefully. But if we wait for 100 percent certainty, then it is often too late.”

• “The college you graduated from is not that important. The life you have chosen to live after college is.”

• “When you look for a job, try to find out how long a company’s employees stay at the company. This is more important than the size of the company or the salary offered. If people keep leaving, then that says a lot.”

• “Dedication to one’s job should not be measured by how late one works or how often one forgoes a vacation but by how effectively one works and what kind of contribution one makes to the business.”

• “The vaguest and least effective statement: “I will have whatever.”

• “Those who have not realized their True Self live like the blind, unintentionally scratching someone else’s leg. If you would like to scratch your own leg, first awaken to your True Self.”

• “Some may think that life in such a community is repressed, strict, and difficult, but that is not the case. A monastic life is characterized by simple beauty and unexpected joy. Monks find happiness in things that may seem trivial to those who pursue the material trappings of success. Watching the seasons change—the blossoming of the magnolias, the dazzling fall foliage, the first snowfall—brings indescribable joy and gratitude. A simple meal made with fresh ingredients from the nearby mountains is a source of great contentment. Because our monastic brothers are our friends, teachers, and family, we are never lonely”

• “If our faith can be shaken from merely learning about a different tradition, then that faith is not worth keeping”

• “when the essence is forgotten, ritual takes over.”

• “He who knows only one religion knows none.”

• “A spiritual leader is a finger pointing at the moon. If the finger attempts to become the moon, this can lead to a grave sin.”

• “Above all, please understand that what makes you feel tense and awkward is not the spirituality itself but the pressure from your family to conform. You may resent their coerciveness and self-righteousness”

• “Above all, please understand that what makes you feel tense and awkward is not the spirituality itself but the pressure from your family to conform. You may resent their coerciveness and self-righteousness. You may feel their spiritual path is strange and unorthodox.”

• “In the beginning, our prayer takes the shape of, “Please grant me this, please grant me that,” and then develops into, “Thank you for everything,” and then matures into, “I want to resemble you.” Eventually it transcends language”

• “then try to pray this way as well— “Enlarge my heart to hold and accept the things I cannot.” Do not bargain with God, Buddha, or any divine being to give you what you want in exchange for material offerings. If you do not know how to solve a problem in your life, give prayer a try. As you bring your attention inward and sincerely seek an answer, something sacred within you unlocks the door of inner wisdom. If you are desperately looking to meet someone special, send your prayer out to the universe. The universe is an amazing matchmaker. Monastics can pray for many years because their prayers of happiness for others make them happy. As I prepare to officiate at my friend’s wedding, I become joyous. For unenlightened people, not every day is a good day, because they feel happy only when things happen the way they want them to. For enlightened people, every single day is a good day, because they feel free knowing that nothing can take away their wisdom. When an unenlightened person does good, he tries to leave his mark. When an enlightened person does good, he leaves no marks. The holier a person is, the more likely it is that she describes herself as a sinner. This is because she doesn’t lie to herself. ”

• “The saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else.”

• “Everything is impermanent, including the world’s most comfortable posture.”

• “If you begin to believe what others say about you, they will begin to control you. Not everything that appears in your mind is true. Do not let someone else’s opinion rule your life.”

• “If children do not receive enough attention, psychological problems often emerge.”

• “If I like myself, it is easy for me to like people around me. But if I am unhappy with myself, it is easy to feel unhappy with those around me. May you become your own biggest fan!”

• “The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.”

• “neither the human nor the universe are necessarily absurd on their own, but rather, their relationship is absurd. As humans, we exist with an innate desire for meaning, reason, and order, but yet, we simultaneously exist in a universe that appears to lack all of the above. So far as we can tell, the universe is completely indifferent. Thus, what we want and expect from the universe is fundamentally in contradiction with what we get. In this conflict, the absurdity of the human experience is found.”

• “Unlike anything else in the known universe, we are able to consciously observe, consider, reason, and act. As a result of our unique abilities, we ask ourselves why. We desperately try to find the answer. We get increasingly clever in our attempts, yet every time, just like the rock in The Myth of Sisyphus, at some point, we return to the bottom of the hill, leaving us to start anew.”

• “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”

• “Everyone is experiencing the same dissonance of being, living their own story through the nauseating rollercoaster of ups and downs to nowhere. It is both banal and almost hollow to say that we should be compassionate and kind to others because of this. Every first-grade child knows this in fewer words. The notion of togetherness and compassion is sold to us in soda and fast-food commercials as well as nearly every Disney movie. It is so commodified, clichéd, and obvious that it’s hard to even take seriously the idea of needing to consider it further. Life isn’t a soda commercial nor a Disney movie, and it isn’t anywhere near as clean as a first-grade child could likely even imagine. There is a world filled with malevolence and anger and greed and impatience and all the rest. But for this very reason—because compassion is so trite and yet still seemingly so hard and absent—it is perhaps all the more essential and rational to give it serious focus and effort.”

• “There is but one thing that seems to have any positive effect against such absurdity: a sort of compassion for the whole. We must try to remember that everyone is in it, and everyone is flailing against it for the same reasons as everyone else. Thus, within limits perhaps, everyone deserves such consideration and compassion.”

• “Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

• “We see the world not as it is, but as we are,”

• “In all cases, for the most part, knowing what the real color of things are (metaphorically speaking) is perhaps minimally relevant to living and thriving as an individual and as a species. Perhaps what matters more is that we can agree and disagree on subjective things sufficiently well enough, cordially enough, and often enough. And it seems as though that in order to do so, if such a feat is possible, the prerequisite is a willingness to embrace often being wrong.”

• “We so often take personally what the world does without us in mind.”

• “Those who are often angered reveal themselves to be a strange sort of optimist, still in denial of the tragedies of this life and the death of their youthful innocence—the belief that life can be what it can’t.”

• “A theory in psychology known as appraisal theory, initially developed by psychologist Magda Arnold, suggests that our emotional responses are in large part created by our conscious evaluations of events—how we view, interpret, and label stimuli rather than the stimuli themselves. In other words, in between our primary experience of an event and our emotional experience of an event, there is a filtering process that occurs through and is based on our cognitive faculties. In this space, how we think based on our experiences, perceptions, views, and values determines what we feel.”

• “For the stoics, events in the world are objective and neutral, and our qualitative emotional experiences are merely a product of the narratives we tell ourselves. “It doesn’t hurt me unless I interpret it’s happening as harmful to me. I can choose not to,” wrote Marcus Aurelius.”

• “Rather, if we realize that the world has not singled us out, that most people are good people trying their best, that ignorance is far more often behind the curtain and not malice, that our emotions are not the result of being made victims by others but by us not taking ownership of them ourselves, that life is inherently difficult and suffering is fundamental to everyone, we can perhaps more accurately evaluate if what we are angered by is worthy of being angry about, and how.”

• “Knowing how to know and be yourself versus actually knowing and being it is like knowing the mechanics of how to surf on paper and then going out into the ocean and encountering an actual wave.”

• “Of course, it feels very nice to be liked. In certain cases, it is essential. Our wellbeing depends to some degree on the quality of our social relations, which require us to be sufficiently liked by at least some people some amount of the time.”

• “In infancy and early childhood, we are inadvertently conditioned by our parents, teachers, and other people we encounter to feel like we are the center of all attention, the most important thing in the world and beyond. Everything we do is relevant, consequential, or impressive. When we walk for the first time, it’s the most important thing that could have happened in the world that day. If we draw on the wall, it’s the worst thing. But of course, the world did not care about either of those things that day at all. As we age and are further socialized into the world, we slowly but surely realize that the world mostly has never and will never care about what just about anyone does, including us. We are not really at the center of anything at all, not even our own minds. We are not important in any grand sense. No one really cares.”

• “In his famous twentieth-century play, No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people!”

• “Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass,”

• “I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am,”

• “I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry,”

• “No man,” he wrote, “can antedate his experience or guess what faculty or feeling a new object shall unlock, any more than he can draw today the face of a person whom he shall see tomorrow for the first time.” In other words, no one can know what life will be like tomorrow nor what such life may cause one to think or feel. However, one must move with it and live according to the present now.”

• “Arguably, great artists and writers aren’t popular because they say something no one has thought of or experienced before, but because they say something that most of us have but weren’t sure we were right in doing so. Emerson”

• “Perhaps so long as one authentically stands in their own position of confusion and limitation, they have still remained in accordance with their own relative truth and greatness, and the notion of self-reliance holds steady.”

• “One’s shadow does not disappear by looking away from it. In the same way that one cannot literally evade the shadow of their body by outrunning it, there is no move or evasive tactic that separates the individual from their psychological shadow. The danger, rather, is in the attempt to do so—the ignorance and denial of it. Jung wrote: Good does not”

• “One must know of a problem to be able to fix it, and it is an act of healing to admit that one is sick.”

• “man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.”

• “What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression and with all this yet to die. It seems like a hoax.”

• “One must be careful to not make the singularness of their shot at existence a pressure to get it all right—to do all the right things and think all the right thoughts and feel all the right feelings.”

• “The point is quite the opposite; you will mostly do a lot of the wrong things, think a lot of the wrong thoughts, and feel a lot of the wrong feelings. But precisely because this is your one shot at life, this must be ok. You are driving blind through the most impossibly complex, strange maze that you know ends in a head-on collision with a wall. What use is getting more upset or guilty about feeling upset or guilty in an existence that set you up? Of course, this is far easier said than done, but perhaps in true, deep contemplations of one’s mortality, at least on occasion, this reminder can sometimes serve more as a sedative and not merely a stimulant.”

• “It is strange and rather terrifying to consider that we can be something for now and nothing forever—but perhaps it is only because of the fact that we are nothing forever that we can be something for now.”

• “We might never know what nothing is until we know nothing at all. And even then, we might not. We are all free to imagine nothing however we like. Because if nothingness is in fact the source and destiny that connects us all, then perhaps, through nothing, anything is possible.”

• “If we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures.”

• “the more one tries to remove or escape the negative experience of life, the more negative it becomes. Rather, the more one faces it willingly and intentionally, the stronger and more equipped one becomes—the more meaningful and positive the pain and hardship can be made to feel .”

• “However, beyond this area of exceptional misery, there still exists a realm of suffering and unhappiness entrenched in human life that appears to be unshakeable, even when one’s circumstances are relatively good. This realm can draw the healthy, decent, prosperous person to self-hatred and self-sabotage, to addiction and suicide. It is the realm of misery in the background of any and every moment that should be enjoyed simply and happily but isn’t. It is the mental pain that is specific to no one but applicable to everyone.”

• “The person who depends on their ability to accomplish away the struggle, sadness, and uncertainty of life, could accomplish the whole world just to be met with a disappointment so intense that it would destroy whatever is left of them. Perhaps, then, our quality of life is not found in the heights of our happiness or pleasures but in how we choose to consider and look at what surrounds these extremes, how we attempt to create a life of personal intention, meaning, and decency, and justify the inevitable lows rather than always trying to escape them.”

• “every exhalation, there is a breath to come so long as we keep breathing. In every moment of hardship, pain, confusion, or weakness, there is a story taking place filled with the potential for triumph and vitality worthy of tears bursting with wonder and fondness for life, so long as we keep moving. So long as there is life in us, there is the rare and exclusively human”

• “In every exhalation, there is a breath to come so long as we keep breathing. In every moment of hardship, pain, confusion, or weakness, there is a story taking place filled with the potential for triumph and vitality worthy of tears bursting with wonder and fondness for life, so long as we keep moving. So long as there is life in us, there is the rare and exclusively human opportunity to take this chaotic, thrashing existence, this strange nothingness, and make it something. There is the chance to connect and love and help, to feel and think and live, to experience the cosmic everything. And at some point, perhaps that is enough.”

• “When you get the shit kicked out of you long enough … you will have a tendency to say what you really mean,” said”

• “Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with the bluebells in their hair … When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing, but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it. When it’s stuffed in your ears, nostrils, under your finger nails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.”

• “There are degrees of madness, and the madder you are the more obvious it will be to other people. Most of my life I have hidden my madness within myself but it is there,”

• “Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness,”

• “Like a wild elephant, the untamed mind can inflict enormous damage on ourselves and those around us.”

• “One traditional Tibetan doctor whom I know once commented on people living in the West, “From the perspective of Tibetan medicine, you are all suffering from nervous disorders. But given how ill you are, you are coping remarkably well!”

• “Physicians don’t heal abrasions, and surgeons don’t mend bone fractures. Instead, they do whatever they can to allow the body to heal itself—by keeping the wound clean, setting the broken bone, and so on.”

• “The reason we don’t devote more time to balancing our minds is that we are betting our lives that we can find the happiness we seek by chasing fleeting pleasures. Psychologists have called this the hedonic treadmill,11 and the first step to escaping from this exhausting grind is to seek a vision of genuine happiness that draws on our own, largely untapped inner resources.”

• “During the path of cultivation, he would meet enemies one by one. If he wanted to improve, he would have to constantly look towards the future and review the past. Only then, he would be able to improve slowly.”

• “When there are too many debts, one stops to worry.‘”

• “The martial path was lonely. It was a source of great happiness if one found a confidant.”

• “The Azure Yang Lord’s uninhibited life was filled with ups and down. Having felt both extreme happiness and sadness, he knew how difficult it was to earn happiness. If he could make this moment last forever, that would be a blissful matter… However, be it the Azure Yang Lord or the ancient Great Empress, they knew that these days were not going to last.”

• “Warriors had to suffer hardship and experience numerous life and death encounters. If they were not careful, they would lose their lives. They had to restrain their desires and endure lonely decades of reclusive training. Wasn’t all this for them to lead a free life and do as they pleased when their power succeeded on reaching unprecedented heights!? Everything in the world depended on one’s preference. To do as the heart pleased!”

• “The ways of the world are full of vicissitudes, and in it, there is the grief at separation and joy in union, the suffering of life and death. No matter how thick a history book is, it would not be able to record everything down. However, it is such infinite matters of the past that can pass by with a finger snap. In one’s old age, while looking back at the past, only then would you feel like everything was ephemeral.”

• “The further he walked, the tinier he felt.”

• “Against the vast cosmos, the lives of people were like ants. It was like how bacteria did not know what it meant for the first and last day of the month, or how mole crickets did not know the seasons. What was a mortal’s life to the Universe? Yi Yun did not want to remain like a speck of dust in the Universe.”

• “In a warrior’s world, we may have the power to cause great destruction, have long lifespans, and are able to lead extravagant lives, but the pressure is intense. Be it life-and-death trials or breakthroughs that require great risks, or the sense of urgency of being killed by someone else at any moment in time, it forces us to continuously forge ahead.” “The accumulation of all these pressure naturally need an opportunity for it to be released.”

• “Before one’s heart reduced to mediocrity, Great Dao lies within one’s heart!”

• “Those without sufficient strength but can bear disgrace and a heavy burden are people who I appreciate as well.”

• “Everyone had their own time, but time treated everyone equally.”

• “Were destruction and finality the end? Matter in the Universe could not remain eternal. They would eventually proceed towards destruction, including the Universe. But what happened after destruction? Could it be that all that was left was eternal ‘nothingness’? Everything in the world underwent birth and death. A drop of water could evaporate and become part of a cloud before condensing into new drops of rain. Plants would wither, but the fruits that they bore could give rise to seeds. Mortals would die of age, but babies would grow up into adults. Stars could be destroyed, but new stars would eventually be born… Everything in the world underwent a cycle, so it definitely included the Universe. The destruction of the Universe was the beginnings of a new Universe. It was just that the cycle was immensely long that it was beyond the imagination of mere mortals. New Universe… Yi Yun suddenly seemed to realize something. What were the beginnings of the Universe? Dao begets One, One begets Two… Before Yin-Yang and Space-time was Chaos! Rebirth after destruction was Chaos and Major Destruction respectively. They were both two Great Dao of Supremacy! Why were there two Great Dao of Supremacy? They might be like Yin-Yang, Space-time, Water-Fire, just two sides of the Universe. The two could supplement each other and not a single one was dispensable.”

• “But if a warrior does not have any aspirations, he won’t be able to go far either.”

• “To what end do we practice martial arts for? If we can’t depend on the sword, so what about death? One’s true richness of heart is not to be annihilated!”

• “Helping a man once gains gratitude, but not helping that man again gains hatred.”

• “grinding a chopper will not hold up the work of cutting firewood”

• “As the saying goes, he who gets other’s kindness but does not repay is not a gentleman.”

• “speaking.”History changes erratically. Time is enough to wipe away many things.”

• “Chaos in the world leads to the suffering of all life, but it is something some people are willing to see. Heroes are born in difficult times.”

• “Humans were warlike, to begin with. It was common among humans to fight unceasingly for their interests. Furthermore, there were some perverse people who wanted revenge on the world. Such people were even more dangerous. There was no limit to what they would do. Yi Yun knew that there was evil deeply rooted in human nature. However, he was not a person who would bemoan the state of the universe and mankind, much less the kind who would question life after seeing the ugly nature of humans and eventually decide to destroy the entire world in a crazy fit. He was only Yi Yun, an ordinary person that pursued the martial path, wanting his life to escape the cycle of samsara.”

• “When one postures to impress a girl, his failure becomes all the more foolish.”

• “When warriors took lives or destroyed an item, or even shattered a world, they could not avoid violence. Only time could turn everything into dust in an infinitely calm manner simply by passing. It was silent from beginning to end. Time was the most unique power of destruction. Yi”

• “A man who loses position and influence may be subjected to much indignity. It’s all fated…”

• “He who understands the times is a wise man.”

• “Yi Yun refused to believe that someone would forgo their lives for a master who had not won the hearts of people.”

• “We warriors have been cultivating our entire lives. What was it for? It’s not to enjoy riches or sex. Nor is it about being placed on a pedestal while enslaving those beneath us! We cultivate to fight against our fate! We do not wish to to let Samsara run its course, so we cultivate for years! Our martial heritage has been passed down for millions of years, billions of years, and will be so for trillions of years! It’s not for us to kneel down to beg for mercy after gaining mastery. With the backbone broken, there’s no way one can straighten one’s back.”

• “The Heavenly Dao’s evolution is unending. Creation and Destruction are interchangeable, forming a complete circle. Be it life or a universe, they have formation, existence, disintegration, and emptiness; birth, aging, illness, and death. You wanted to devour the Heavenly Dao, robbing and changing the fate of the universe. You wanted to empower yourself by initiating the deaths of millions; hence, you were destined to be abandoned by the Heavenly Dao.”

• “Legends were typically like this. They would not be eclipsed with the passage of time, but instead, they became histories that one tried to live up to.”

• “Life, from lifeforms as large as towering trees to bugs as small as ants, the reason for all they do is for the continuation of their bloodline.”

• “In this Sinkhole that was filled with despair, a bunch of seniors were forging ahead bearing the burdens, so as to hold up the sky for the young. Although these seniors had their backs hunched from the pressures of time, to the point of not being able to bear the weight any further, that was already sufficient, no matter how tiny that piece of sky they held up was. They had already done everything they could have done.”

• “The crests and troughs of life are all but ephemeral mists. How nice if reunion and separation were fixed in place of that first meeting. A thousand years pass and happiness a certainty, but how much was sadness in exchange?”

• “Imagination comes from limitations. When you can do anything it gets debilitating”

• “Every storm runs out of rain”

• “Writing is nature’s way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is”

• “Faith is a gift, not a reward”

• “Where there is a will, there grows a forest”

• “It’s frustrating navigating my feelings because they are all self-imposed - the only person I can get angry at is, well, myself. ”

• “The Heavens and Earth will not move; neither will the stone turn in the flowing river. There is still a long journey ahead of us. It’s just as you have always said. There’s no need to force yourself to do anything. We just hope Teacher can return safely; that is our only request.”

• “You can try to run from the sun as hard as you can, but you can never outrun the sunlight”

• “A sect’s decline is not due to the external pressures but due to the internal disputes and lack of unity”

• “Literature lasts for eternity,

• A Martial artist retires at death.”

• “When things are moving so fast, it’s good to remember that sometimes you’ll waste a lot of effort or get scooped. The best thing you can do is to just accept it and keep going on your process. You’re not alone in this one.”

• “Am I the creator if I simply role the dice until I win the lottery?”

• “If you write a piece of code and it seems simple to you, but others think it is complex, then it is complex.”

• “Ironically, there never seems to be enough time to do something as idle as contemplate the very nature of time.”

• “In work, he writes, time is horizontal, a pattern of forward-leaning labor time punctuated by little gaps of rest that simply refresh us for more work. For Pieper, those little gaps are not leisure. True leisure, instead, exists on a “vertical” axis of time, one whose totality cuts through or negates the entire dimension of workaday time, “run[ning] at right angles to work.” If such moments happen to refresh us for work, that is merely secondary.”

• “As long as slowness is invoked merely to make the machine of capitalism run faster, it risks being a cosmetic fix, another little gap on the horizontal plane of work time.”

• “What first appears to be a wish for more time may turn out to be just one part of a simple, yet vast, desire for autonomy, meaning, and purpose.”

• “There is a lonely absurdity in the idea of racing against the clock at the end of time, as evidenced in a headline by the parody site Reductress: “Woman Waiting for Evidence That World Will Still Exist in 2050 Before She Starts Working Toward Goals.”

• “What I find in chronos is not comfort but dread and nihilism, a form of time that bears down on me, on others, relentlessly. Here, my actions don’t matter. The world worsens as assuredly as my hair is graying, and the future is something to get over with. In contrast, what I find in kairos is a lifeline, a sliver of the audacity to imagine something different. Hope and desire, after all, can exist only on the differential between today and an undetermined tomorrow.”

• “Tomorrow was growing raw out of the husk of today, and in it, I’d be different. All of us would.”

• “How much someone’s time is valued is not measured simply by a wage, but by who does what kind of work and whose temporality has to line up with whose, whether that means rushing or waiting or both.”

• “The lava moves, and it’s not because of us.”

• “The future is always over the horizon, and to be alive is to be in transit. For a few minutes, a sunrise collects all that ineffable bittersweetness into a single burning point.”

• “In turn, looking for kairos while living largely in chronos puts you in that difficult gray area between personal agency and structural limits, an area long explored by social theorists but also simply experienced by anyone negotiating life in a social world.”

• “Sometimes the best muse is the thing you’re so afraid of you almost cannot speak it.”

• “Landes suggests that a crucial deviation happened with the development of Christian canonical hours, particularly under the sixth-century Rule of Saint Benedict. The Rule, which subsequently spread to other orders, specified seven times during the day when Benedictine monks should pray, as well as an eighth in the middle of the night. Determining that “idleness is the enemy of the soul,” the Rule also described punishments for monks who failed to hurry sufficiently upon the signal for work or prayer.”

• “A clock hour was meant to be an hour, no matter where or what the season, just as a man-hour would be expected to be an hour, no matter who the man. This was as useful for regulating labor as it was for conquering land.”

• “Clocks arrived as tools of domination.”

• “On a larger scale, they graded native populations as being more or less “progressed” into modernity based on how removed their systems of time seemed from nature—a”

• “As would be the case in many different contexts going forward, the science of recording labor days was inextricable from the project of intensifying them.”

• “none of us who toil for our daily bread are free. At one time…we were chattel slaves; today we are, one and all, white and black, wage slaves.”

• “When the relationship of time to literal money is expressed as a natural fact, it obscures the political relationship between the seller of time and its buyer. This may seem obvious, but if time is money, it is so in a way that’s different for a worker than for an employer. For the worker, time is a certain amount of money—the wage. But the buyer, or employer, hires a worker to create surplus value; this excess is what defines productivity under capitalism. From an employer’s point of view, purchased time could always yield more money.”

• “The only reward for working faster is more work.”

• “In this way, Taylorism rendered labor more abstract and fungible, hastening a process that has often been referred to as “de-skilling.” Among other things, this deepened the divide between how different kinds of time are valued. As Braverman puts it, “Every step in the labor process is divorced, so far as possible, from special knowledge of training and reduced to simple labor. Meanwhile, the relatively few persons for whom special knowledge and training are reserved are freed so far as possible from the obligations of simple labor. In this way a structure is given to all labor processes that at its extremes polarizes those whose time is infinitely valuable and those whose time is worth almost nothing.”

• “The more fragmented and minutely timeable work becomes, the more meaningless it becomes.”

• “A psychopath would make a terrible content moderator.”

• “At Cognizant, where humans keep coming in for work despite the conditions, one worker tells Newton that they are merely “bodies in seats.”

• “The tragedy of fungible labor time lies first in its historical association with coercion, exploitation, and the imagining of people as machines. Time is the punitive dimension in which the wage worker is both measured and squeezed. But beyond that, an overemphasis on fungible time upholds an impoverished view of what time and labor are in the first place.”

• “Just because you’re going forward doesn’t mean I’m going backward.”

• “As a form of Protestantism, seventeeth-century Puritanism invited introspection and constant evaluation of the self against a high moral standard, a practice that included the use of daily journals where self-observation and measurement could take place.”

• “A feeling of time pressure can result from constantly having to switch tasks or coordinate with external factors. Here,”

• “Self-help has generally promised to revolutionize your life, not the social or economic hierarchy—and you can’t really blame anyone for not fulfilling a promise they never made. At the same time, even seemingly practical self-help can read as an invitation to find a niche in a brutal world and wait for the storm to pass you over.”

• “If time management is not simply an issue of numerical hours but of some people having more control over their time than others, then the most realistic and expansive version of time management has to be collective:”

• “Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation.”

• “Trained to set her sights on infinity, she never experiences the feeling of having actually reached a goal and, instead, exhibits the “auto-aggression” of the master and mastered rolled into one. She is forever “jumping over [her] own shadow,” frustrated at the impossible gap between what is and what could be.”

• “Social comparison is probably as old as time, but to compare a wide range of people using the same grades, you have to be able to turn those people into data and decide what you’re optimizing for.”

• “If, in Taylorism, the measurement of work was an attempt to intensify it, then, in eugenics, the measurement of people was an attempt to “mold” them in a specific direction, a mechanistic combination of Mendelian genetics and social Darwinism.”

• “this is “a terrible time to have a midlife crisis.” But advice for winning the rat race assumes that you’re running”

• “But advice for winning the rat race assumes that you’re running in it, rather than peeling away from a vanishing dream.”

• “Slow living is now ‘for sale’ and approaches a consumerist lifestyle mostly for middle-class metropolitan dwellers—the majority of whom are probably far from holding transformative, progressivist or even socialist agendas. Arguably, many would admit that ‘it all needs to slow down,’ but such slowness would then be, more often than not, consumed, and consumed privately.”

• “It’s just that, as the experience economy expands to include commodified notions of things like slowness, community, authenticity, and “nature”—all while income inequality yawns wider and the signs of climate change intensify—I feel the panic of watching possible exits blocked. I keep wanting to do something instead of consume the experience of it. But seeking new ways of being, I find only new ways of spending.”

• “Whether conspicuous, compensatory, or both, consumption has long had a relationship to leisure, which can make leisure a strange kind of circumscribed freedom.”

• “Sociologists have observed that once assembly-line jobs made it difficult to see how well or hard someone had worked, what became visible instead was how much someone was able to consume. This consumption, in turn, became the new way to signal how hard one had worked.”

• “What makes you unique?” is a standard interview question. As a result, what once looked like leisure so easily becomes the arena both of the eternal self-upgrade and the search for some uniqueness to exploit. Marketing advice formerly given to companies—for example to “find your niche”—is now applicable to individuals during every moment of the day.”

• “true leisure requires the kind of emptiness in which you remember the fact of your own aliveness.”

• “Leisure is not refreshment-for-work but something completely different that exists for its own sake.”

• “If I exhibited the leisure mindset while in line for groceries, it was at least in part because I wasn’t worried about paying for them.”

• “Pieper’s definition of leisure emphasizes wholeness; it is “when a man is at one with himself, when he acquiesces in his own being.”

• “Heartbreak did not make me love the birds less; it did not make the ocean less beautiful; it only suffused my seeing them with a deep desire for things to be different.”

• “momentary pattern of light. Perhaps this is precisely what Pieper meant with his “vertical” time—maybe it is vertical not just in that it’s the opposite of horizontal, but also in that it reaches deep into the recesses of history even as it stretches up toward an infinite and utopian ideal.”

• “Rest is not some cute lil luxury item you grant to yourself as an extra treat after you’ve worked like a machine and are now burned out,” Hersey tweeted in October 2020. “Rest is our path to liberation. A portal for healing. A right.”

• “Hersey uses social media for work but is critical of the way it encourages a grind culture with historical roots in capitalism and white supremacy.”

• “introduced”—for example, indentured or wage labor. Whereas”

• “Whereas the source of boredom for the leisure class was free time, the source of boredom for everyone else was work, and working people had no problem deciding what to do with whatever leisure time they were allotted.”

• “In its least useful form, the concept of leisure time reflects an undignified process: working to buy the temporary experience of freedom and then faithfully breathing air in the little gaps that are allowed in the horizontal plane of work. Rest and recreation are applied like maintenance, the leisure machine to the feeding machine.”

• “At its most useful, however, leisure time is an interim means of questioning the bounds of the work that surrounds it. Like a stent in a culture that can’t stand what looks like emptiness, it might provide that vertical crack in the horizontal scale of work and not-work—that critical pause during which the worker wonders why she works so much, where collective grief is processed, and where the edges of something new start to become visible.”

• “What songs are audible when the wind stops? What has been kept alive in the time snatched from work and sheltered from ongoing destruction—what moments of recognition, what ways of relating, what other imagined worlds, what other selves? What other kinds of time?”

• “In his 2021 special, Inside, Bo Burnham deadpans that “the outside world, the non-digital world, is merely a theatrical space in which one stages and records content for the much more real, much more vital, digital space. One should only engage with the outside world as one engages with a coal mine. Suit up, gather what is needed, and return to the surface.”

• “For Bergson, time was duration—something creating, developing, and somewhat mysterious, as opposed to abstract and measurable. According to him, all our problems conceiving of the true nature of time stemmed from wanting to imagine discrete moments sitting side by side in space. He further noted that this “space” was not concrete environmental space, but something purely conceptual: Think of that green-on-black grid that sometimes shows up in the virtual nonspace of sci-fi movies, and think of moments in this kind of time as cubes existing in that space. (This conception also provided the grounds for the concept of fungible time I mention in chapters 1 and 2.) Bergson thought that our predisposition toward thinking of time in these kinds of spatial terms came from our experience manipulating inert matter; we wanted to see time in the same way, as something we could cut up, stack, and move around.”

• “Time as expressed in these processes—which Bergson explains using what he calls the élan vital (usually translated as “vital impetus” or “life force”)—is not an abstract quantity to be counted up and measured. Instead, it’s another irreversible turn of the kaleidoscope, something driving division, reproduction, growth, decay, and complexity. The old adage “You never step in the same river twice” also speaks quite well to what Bergson is describing, especially if you go on to consider the shifts in evolution of the riverbank, the canyon that the river may be slowly carving, and maybe even the cellular processes in your foot.”

• “Meanwhile, as you stand there thinking about it, the live edge of the lava is moving forward into the future, which is imminent in every present moment but also contains the history of everything that happened before. Another example would be a seed that has fallen from one individual in a generation of plants and that contains the instructions for a future plant.”

• “Clock time is not the only form of time reckoning we experience, but it is certainly primary in how many of us think about the “stuff” of time. And it was an allegiance to clock time that allowed colonists, anthropologists, and contemporary Western observers in general to view non-Western and indigenous cultures as being without, or outside, time.”

• “We don’t have a word for nonlinear in our languages because nobody would consider traveling, thinking, or talking in a straight line in the first place. The winding path is just how a path is, and therefore it needs no name.”

• “by every subsequent wave. Look again at the pebbles. Make no mistake: They are neither signs nor symbols of time. No—they really are two things at once: seafloor from the last ice age, and future sand.”

• “Resting here gives us a very different sense of being “on time.” Rather than avatars passing through an empty calendar square, we are actually on top of the material outcome of processes that span millions of years into both the past and the future. Suddenly, everything we look at is suffused with concrete time: not just the pebbles, crags, and cliffs, but also the fog’s slow movement to the south; each wave’s unrepeatable expression of tides and wind; the frenetic activity of the beach flies; the dispersion of air and water through our bodies; and even the chemicals flashing across our synapses as we think these very thoughts. They, too, will never repeat, and they, too, make the world anew.”

• “ROCKS WILL TEACH you the inseparability of time and space.”

• “I see that the events of the past are still present….This impression is a glimpse not of timelessness but timefulness, an acute consciousness of how the world is made by—indeed, made of—time.”

• “Newtonian time is the kind of time that can be measured, bought, and sold. Wage work requires us to see time as “stuff” divorced from bodies and environmental context.”

• “There is no inherent reason for a season to be any length of time, much less of four equal, mutually exclusive lengths. Until relatively recently, the naming and recognition of seasons or seasonal entities was an indicator of some action to be taken: collecting, hunting, harvesting.”

• “If, as Deloria puts it, each place exhibits a “personality,” then it is made out of as much when as who: a string of overlapping developments like the tracks of a song. This song sounds slightly different in each place:”

• “invisibility is part of the very nature of habit.”

• “In the translator’s afterword to a 2010 edition of An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Marc Lowenthal emphasizes the “attempt” in Perec’s toc: true title, writing that “time, unarrestable, works against [Perec’s] project….Every bus that passes, every person who walks by, every object, thing, and event—everything that happens and that does not happen ultimately serves no other function than that of so many chronometers, so many signals, methods, and clues for marking time, for eroding permanence.”

• “The Birds Are Not on Lockdown, and More People Are Watching Them,”

• “it might “give us peace and calm to see that even though our rhythm is interrupted, there is a larger rhythm that continues to go on.”

• “Most living entities and systems on this planet obviously do not live by the Western human clock (though some, like the crows who memorize a city’s daily garbage truck route, do of course adapt to the timing of human activities). To watch a brown creeper as it inches up and down, peering into crevices and extracting bugs with its little dentist beak, is thus a way of catching a ride out of the grid and toward a time sense so different that it is barely imaginable to us.”

• “The literal tree in front of you is encoding time and change at this literal moment.”

• “This exercise of unfreezing something in time is not hard to do. If you want to see time that isn’t fungible, just pick a point in space—a branch, a yard, a sidewalk square, a webcam—and simply keep watch. A story is being written there. Like the larger and larger wind patterns on Windy.com, this story is inseparable from the story of all life, even yours. This story is, finally, the signature of “it”: the restless, unstoppable, constantly overturning thing that makes it all go.”

• “The world, just like the architecture of a city, becomes a patchwork of outcomes from different weeks, decades, and centuries, all of it being built upon and eroded—pushing, trickling, and winging forward into the unknown.”

• “In a display case, a thing becomes only a facsimile of itself, like a drum hung on the gallery wall,” Kimmerer writes. “A drum becomes authentic when human hand meets wood and hide. Only then do they fulfill its intention.”

• “Having specifically studied how mosses “decide” to grow on a rock, Kimmerer knows that the mosses that grow on rocks are “inordinately resistant to domestication.”

• “Owning diminishes the innate sovereignty of the thing,”

• “To see something in time is to allow that it has a life and to allow that this life entails more than the mechanistic cause-and-effect of a Newtonian world. In this way of thinking, mosses “decide” which rocks to live on, and even rocks have lives.”

• “The specifically disorienting part, for me, was when it showed Canada geese passing over New York City. Seen as part of a journey the geese had taken for thousands of years, the skyline looked suddenly alien to me; “New York” became an odd conglomeration of hard shapes and protrusions along a particular riverbank. The city existed for the geese, too, but they read it differently, perhaps as a signpost on a path of other signposts that may have included other rivers. Their flight path tied these places together into one big calendar. As”

• “THE word experience has a common origin with experiment. To experience something is to be present for it, to be the responsive co-creator of something that is happening—like the ducks and geese who make migration happen by sensing the weather and deciding when to leave.”

• “Experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.”

• “The real paradox is a mind that conceives of the world as inert but that may come to see itself as bound to the same laws of determinism as everything else—in a way, the ultimate self-own.”

• “Freedom is choice, and choice is scattered throughout the universe, pushing forward and acting upon what would constrain it.”

• “For Bergson, the everyday experience of learning and recognition demonstrates both the freshness of each moment and the irreversibility of time. He describes walking through a familiar town where the buildings don’t seem to change. But as he thinks back to the first time he ever observed those buildings, a comparison emerges that momentarily unfreezes the world: “It seems that these objects, continually perceived by me and constantly impressing themselves on my mind, have ended by borrowing from me something of my own conscious existence; like myself they have lived, and like myself they have grown old. This is not a mere illusion: for if today’s impression were absolutely identical with that of yesterday, what difference would there be between perceiving and recognizing, between learning and remembering?”

• “Like rocks pushing up out of the depths and the water that wears them down; like browned and ripened buckeye fruits falling off the tree and rolling down the hill; like poetry, which strains the boundaries of an ossified language; or like Bergson’s cascading rocket that can never be arrested—the co-creation events of our lives do not play out in an external, homogenous time. They are the stuff of time itself.”

• “the future can cease to look like an abstract horizon toward which your abstract ego plods in its lonely container of a body. Instead, “it,” that irrepressible force that drives this moment into the next, is a thing that is speaking back to you always—even and especially from unexpected places. The task for many of us is to learn once more how to hear.”

• “it is one thing to acknowledge the past and future losses that follow from what has occurred; it is another to truly see history and the future proceeding with the same grim amorality as the video playhead, where nothing is driving it except itself. In failing to recognize the agency of both human and nonhuman actors, such a view makes struggle and contingency invisible and produces nihilism, nostalgia, and ultimately paralysis.”

• “some relationships arguably end in the first place because partners have stopped seeing each other in time, one partner having replaced the living, changing other with a static image that can impart no surprises, only a comforting presence.”

• “a Westerner’s attempt to arrive at the idea of how things are “supposed to be” is usually fraught, because it doesn’t take into account who is doing the supposing.”

• “that?…Mountain time and city time appear to be bifocal. Even with geology functioning at such remarkably short intervals,”

• “A super-event in 1934? In 1938? In 1969? In 1978? Who is going to remember that?…Mountain time and city time appear to be bifocal. Even with geology functioning at such remarkably short intervals, people have ample time to forget it.”

• “Fire was part of a reciprocal responsibility between one subject (humans) and another (land).”

• “The land is not really the place (separate from ourselves) where we act out the drama of our isolate destinies. It is not a means of survival, a setting for our affairs….It is rather a part of our being, dynamic, significant, real. It is our self.”

• “To think deterministically is to take things for granted, both forward and backward in time. Just as I misunderstood the forested mountains as a child, projecting them into a supposedly uniform past, the concept of the Anthropocene has the potential to make the outcomes of specific actions by specific people seem like a natural and inevitable condition.”

• “Human beings were rendered economic machines that seek to maximize their share of sparse natural resources. The inscription of a bio-evolutionary and thus inevitable impulse behind the ascent of Western Man—“we all want to grab more resources, Europeans just did it better than everyone else”—came to vindicate capitalism, white supremacy, and imperial expansion. The West invented Man and projected Him onto the past as natural and timeless, rather than historical and cultural.”

• “The story of Enlightenment Man teaches me an all-too-common truth: that the people who stand to gain the most from determinism (in others) are typically the people doing the determining.”

• “We just sell the cigarettes; you’re the ones smoking them.”

• “In the meantime, energy companies’ emphasis on consumption is disingenuous. This rhetoric echoes Big Tobacco’s effort to portray itself as a neutral purveyor of what consumers just can’t seem to help but demand. In other words, We just sell the cigarettes; you’re the ones smoking them. A framing like this one portrays climate change as solely”

• “A framing like this one portrays climate change as solely “our” fault, where the “our” is an aggregate of consumers who should attend to their carbon footprint calculators. All the while, as Aronoff writes, “every shred of evidence suggests the [energy] industry is moving full speed ahead in the opposite direction, pushing more exploration and more production as temperatures rise, seas swell, and fires burn.” One smoky day while I was writing this chapter, a Wells Fargo ATM asked me if I wanted to donate to help with the wildfires. I stared back at the screen. Wells Fargo is one of the largest funders of fossil fuels, having invested $198 billion into the coal, oil, and gas industry in the four years following the Paris Agreement. Just as the industry of individual time management resells the idea of time as money to the isolated bootstrapper, energy companies sell the idea of the carbon footprint to conceal larger and more significant avenues of change. These include both technological and political tools to which we already have access. For Klein, Aronoff, and others, some of those tools would be public regulation and oversight—things like the Green New Deal—and standing up to the global trade agreements that favor the suicidal time horizon of energy companies. Indeed, Klein has an entire chapter toc: true titled “Planning and Banning.” Klein acknowledges that this is an uphill battle in the United States, where both planning and banning are currently decried as government overreach. Nevertheless, she writes, “we should be clear about the nature of the challenge: it is not that ‘we’ are broke or that we lack options. It is that our political class is utterly unwilling to go where the money is (unless it’s for a campaign contribution), and the corporate class is dead set against paying its fair share.” For her part, Aronoff takes great pains throughout her book to remind us that the hill in the uphill battle is historically specific: “In positing all of human existence as an endless striving toward market society, neoliberals had to erase not just the possibility of a future but all memory of a past when humans managed to organize themselves in other ways. The kinds of tools needed to navigate out of the climate crisis—things like public ownership, full employment, or even just tough regulations—have receded into memory.” Aronoff is talking mostly about policies of the New Deal era, before a globalized economy took hold and the perception of government regulation soured in a neoliberal atmosphere. But one could extend this notion of political amnesia even further back, as an echo of what serynada describes: rewriting the history of Man as an economic machine. Again, purgatory is enervating. Like a fog machine spewing a priori dystopia, energy companies are still selling their certain future, still designing targets and portraying us as drifting helplessly toward them. I think back on my nightmares, about how the future looks there. Who wrote that scenario? — A PIER JUTS out from the promenade into that uncompromising ocean. The moment we move past the”

• “Without suppressing grief, there has to be a different way of thinking about time than the one in which”

• “Rather, to the nihilist who cannot imagine the future, I am highlighting a perspective that has survived, and continues to survive, the long-ago end of the world. There are many people and places that could accept neither Enlightenment Man’s march of progress nor the billiard ball declinism of the Anthropocene—because that narrative was inherently premised upon their destruction, commodification, and relegation to a state of nonbeing. For those people and places, the historical past can never be an object of nostalgia, and the future has always been in jeopardy. If you don’t want to kick the can down the road, look to those who never recognized the road in the first place. BACK ON THE seawall, there is a circle of five wooden posts that looks like a miniature Stonehenge, that most iconic of calendrical tools.”

• “The land is chief, man is its servant.”

• “NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN. That sign always puts me in my place. It reminds me that the beach is not an amenity for humans—that I can be there, but I’d better learn the laws of the ocean if I want to stay alive.”

• “I grew up on a false plateau I took for infinity.”

• “Observing that the Greek word apokalypsis meant “through the concealed,” Washuta writes that “apocalypse has very little to do with the end of the world and everything to do with vision that sees the hidden, that dismantles the screen.”

• “We live according to the sun, not the clock.”

• “Cynicism and nihilism will make you dry up, like soil compacted by neglect and abuse.”

• “As Marx writes in Capital, “Après moi, le déluge [After me, the flood] is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation.”

• “Language is dynamic, unruly, always splintering. It has to be, because in order to use it, we take words and constructions we never chose and make them do what we—as collectives, however big or small—want them to do.”

• “Just because a language is imposed, it doesn’t mean it can be controlled; and just because it’s spoken, it doesn’t mean it’s been internalized.”

• “An inside joke makes a new inside, a new center.”

• “Time was never a specific minute, but rather spaces of time, like early morning, just afternoon, or just before midnight. The real meaning of Indian time comes from…nake nula waun yelo, a phrase in traditional songs that means ‘I’m ready for whatever, any place, always prepared.’ ”

• “But if, just for a moment, we leave behind historically and culturally specific notions of clock-based punctuality and time as money, then Filipino time actually doesn’t appear to be a problem at all. If you and everyone you know are on it, then it’s just time.”

• “Speaking a language is a way of participating in the making, preservation, and evolving of worlds.”

• “Study is what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice….The point of calling it “study” is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present.”

• “In this partitioned, soundproof, PCB lined office jungle, truly the worst fate is to believe in your boss’s dream, to strive for the company good.”

• “Mould writes that, in either case, creativity is not actually creative, because it merely “produces more of the same form of society.” If it makes progress, it is the progress of capitalist logic into ever-more-minute corners of our daily lives, making what Braverman calls “the universal market” even more universal.”

• “Why are individuals expected to be “resilient” when corporations are not?”

• “The demand for less work might be made “not so that we can have, do, or be what we already want, do, or are, but because it might allow us to consider and experiment with different kinds of lives, with wanting, doing, and being otherwise.”

• “What does one do when one finds oneself marking time on the job? One develops a lot of cynicism, apathy, and anger to which there is no outlet.”

• “To keep walking is to keep living, to keep inquiring, and to keep hoping.”

• “This simple gesture, and the story of the beans, made me realize how broken my mental mechanisms were for thinking about anything beyond the transactional exchange.”

• “Time can have many rhythms, and rhythms can take on many meanings.”

• “Tempo and intensity surround us at every level: we know that a birthday tomorrow can feel like an eternity to a little child whilst a birthday one year ago can seem like only yesterday to an old person. The dormant period of winter is followed by a burst of growth in spring….’Our’ social time as it emerges from common usage is inseparable from the rhythms of the earth. Complexity reigns supreme.”

• “Saying it meant that you could take time and give time, but also that you could plant time and grow more of it and that there were different varieties of time. It meant that all your time grew out of someone else’s time, maybe out of something someone planted long ago. It meant that time was not the currency of a zero-sum game and that, sometimes, the best way for me to get more time would be to give it to you, and the best way for you to get some would be to give it back to me. If time were not a commodity, then time, our time, would not be as scarce as it seemed just a moment ago. Together, we could have all the time in the world.”

• “In “Why Time Management Is Ruining Our Lives,” Oliver Burkeman observes that keeping a detailed log of your time use, in an effort to save time or spend it more wisely, ironically “heightens your awareness of the minutes ticking by, then lost forever.” Whether on the level of minutes or of life stages and benchmarks, the more you stare at time, the more cruelly it seems to slip through your fingers.”

• “the product offered by a capitalist version of wellness is “the means to remake oneself into an ever more perfect self-correcting machine capable of setting goals and moving toward them with smooth determination.”

• “How long does it take, or should it take, for a body to move through the world, the forty-plus-hour work week, the demands of caregiving for ailing parents, the daily commute of the body with its changing needs over the life span—a pregnant body, an aging one, a body in recovery after a bad injury?” Hendren asks. “Is the clock of industrial time built for bodies at all?”

• “It’s actually okay to be on a spectrum of reality. It means that there are times when it’s juicier, there are times when it’s drier, there’s times when I’m gonna be tired, there’s times when I’m going to have a lot of energy. It’s actually part of being alive. It is being alive.”

• “Too worn out to grasp, and forced to sit back, the tired and resigned person finds that something else floods in: the world, in all its detail, its constantly acting and infinitely dispersed agents, and its minute-by-minute changes.”

• “deep tiredness loosens the strictures of identity. Things flicker, twinkle, and vibrate at the edges.”

• “Maybe “the point” isn’t to live more, in the literal sense of a longer or more productive life, but rather, to be more alive in any given moment—a movement outward and across, rather than shooting forward on a narrow, lonely track.”

• “Disability highlights something that is true for all of us: No matter how independent and fit we may feel, we are not simply alive but, rather, kept alive—against odds that some people are nonetheless privileged enough to ignore.”

• “People do not spring up from the soil like mushrooms,” she writes. “People need to be cared for and nurtured throughout their lives by other people.”

• “For me, death is when I can no longer engage with the world around me; when I can no longer take anything in and, therefore, can no longer connect.”

• “what’s the use of building your body if you can’t build your mind?‘”

• “It is, therefore, a severe and grave misinterpretation of man to deal with him as if he were a closed system.”

• “A lack of “direct access” to the mental states of those selves makes us less prone to see them as having evolving inner lives.”

• “No matter how optimized, healthy, and productive I am, I simply will not become more or better forever, which means there are things I will never do and never be. Just like this book, which could have been anything when I started it, my life will take some paths and not others—and then it will end, the thread pulled out of the ball, with no witch to indulge me by taking it back. Realizing that I cannot be everything is in one sense incredibly freeing: It means I am not responsible for being everything. Yet the fact that life ends, for anyone who enjoys being alive and in the world, is also inherently sorrowful.”

• “I feel alive if I’m not alone in the air, but embraced by it. I feel alive when someone’s eyes light up, and mine do too. I feel alive if I can look at a deer and see it looking back at me; if, when geese speak, it sounds like language; if, when I walk on the ground, I feel it pushing back against me.”

• “No one is responsible for an emergence; no one can glory in it, since it always occurs in the interstice.”

• “But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious.”

• “With nothing but distance between you and your destination, it may as well have already taken place. It’s as though you had an amazing set of binoculars that let you see something far away in such detail that you didn’t actually need to go there. Let’s just get it over with, says the heartbroken subject, unable to enjoy her already-broken cup.”

• “You’re turning time into space, he would say. You’re imagining empty blocks of time stretching out in front of you, mentally crossing that distance toward the thing you think has already happened, instead of admitting the creative aspect of time that is ever evolving and shifting, each second heaving the world—and you—through the crust of the present and into the future.”

• “Could it be that the opposite of looking assuredly through binoculars at a flat space would be the perspective you get when rounding a mountain trail—one where, even though you know where you are, things look different at every turn?”

• “Though my episodic memory goes back only so far, my existence is explained by older things: my mother’s immigration, a war whose exigencies threw my grandparents together, and the fish swimming off the coast of Estancia, on the eastern tip of Iloilo. The people who fished there have something to do with me, just as I continue to have something to do with them.”

• “Kinship moves in cycles, the land moves in seasonal cycles, the sky moves in stellar cycles, and time is so bound up in those things that it is not even a separate concept from space. We experience time in a very different way from people immersed in flat schedules and story-less surfaces. In our spheres of existence, time does not go in a straight line, and it is as tangible as the ground we stand on.”

• “Compared to chronos, kairos sounds like the domain of those wayfarers who knew that time is inseparable from space and that every place-moment demands close attention, lest you miss your opportunity. It’s not that you can’t plan, but that the time in the plan doesn’t appear flat, dead, inert. Instead, in the “meantime,” you wait with your ear to the ground for patterns of vibration that will never repeat themselves. Faced with flatness, you look for an opening. When it comes, you take it, and you don’t look back.”

• “You can make the same mistake in the opposite direction, forgetting that the future will contain many such moments of doubt—or even neglecting to notice when you’re in one.”

• “The past would crush you with tradition, and the future would crush you with determinism. Hence the importance and fragility of the “gap” (another term for “non-time”) in the toc: true title of Arendt’s preface, “The Gap between Past and Future.” To live in the gap between past and future is quite simply the human condition, even if culturally dominant and politically convenient views of time, history, and the future obscure it from us. Looking mournfully to the future in which something new can never happen, we can’t see ourselves standing in the gap, the only place where anything new is capable of happening. It makes me wonder if one meaning of “having time” is to halve time—to make a cut in chronos and hold the past and the future apart as much as hope will allow.[*5] — EVERY PIECE OF writing is a time capsule. It assembles fragments of its own world and sends them onward to a reader who exists in a different one, not just in space but also in time. Even writing privately in a journal presupposes a future self who will be reading it—and a future at all. In the case of this book, I cannot know what has happened between the time I am writing this and the time in which you are encountering it. But I can tell you that I am living in a moment of doubt. Perhaps you are, too. That evening when I saw the indistinguishable figure, I had been headed to the place where the road ends, a designated “natural area” called Raab’s Lagoon. There, after the pavement turns to grass, you pass under alder and fir trees and come to a bench dedicated to a man who died in 2016. If you keep going, the pathway juts out into the water, part of an artificial barrier between the waters of Quartermaster Harbor and the smaller lagoon. Across a small breach through which the harbor water flows, the barrier continues on until it hits the other side of the lagoon. The first time I visited, the water in the breach didn’t seem to be moving in any particular direction. It was high tide, though I didn’t know that at the time; having just arrived, I thought the area always looked like that. Over the course of a few weeks, I inevitably became familiar with the tides, because Quartermaster Harbor was right outside the door of my room. When the tide was high, you could hear the water plopping and the plastic canoe docks banging against the wooden posts, something I started to call “the song of the dock.” When the tide was lower, white-winged scoters, migratory diving ducks with a surreal flourish of a white feather under their eyes, would appear in loose flocks and dive for the mussels at the bottom. When the tide was all the way out, the mussel shells were maximally revealed, and both people”

• “The mind always wants to categorize and compare,”

• “A belief may be comforting. Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating.”

• “So the single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger.”

• “Emotion arises at the place where mind and body meet.”

• “If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.”

• “doorway into Being. ¤ An emotion usually represents an amplified and energized thought pattern, and because of its often overpowering energetic charge, it is not easy initially to stay present enough to be able to watch it. It wants to take you over, and it usually succeeds unless there is enough presence in you.”

• “Basically, all emotions are modifications of one primordial, undifferentiated emotion that has its origin in the loss of awareness of who you are beyond name and form. Because of its undifferentiated nature, it is hard to find a name that precisely describes this emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness.”

• “the harder the mind struggles to get rid of the pain, the greater the pain.”

• “Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.”

• “Even when the sky is heavily overcast, the sun hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there on the other side of the clouds.”

• “All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.”

• “Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking.”

• “The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”

• “In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.”

• “Yes, we need the mind as well as time to function in this world, but there comes a point where they take over our lives, and this is where dysfunction, pain, and sorrow set in.”

• “The accumulation of time in the collective and individual human mind also holds a vast amount of residual pain from the past.”

• “Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already”

• “What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?”

• “By watching the mechanics of the mind, you step out of its resistance patterns, and you can then allow the present moment to be.”

• “Accept then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.”

• “Pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible.”

• “Once the pain-body has taken you over, you want more pain. You become a victim or a perpetrator. You want to inflict pain, or you want to suffer pain, or both. There isn’t really much difference between the two.”

• “Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.”

• “your own light will quickly grow stronger. When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after”

• “When a log that has only just started to burn is placed next to one that is burning fiercely, and after a while they are separated again, the first log will be burning with much greater intensity. After all, it is the same fire.”

• “an emotion is the body’s reaction to your mind.”

• “To the ego, death is always just around the corner.”

• “Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power is within, and it is available to you now.”

• “The secret of life is to “die before you die” and find that there is no death.”

• “Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity.”

• “The ego’s needs are endless. It feels vulnerable and threatened and so lives in a state of fear and want.”

• “When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. The mind in itself is not dysfunctional. It is a wonderful tool. Dysfunction sets in when you seek your self in it and mistake it for who you are. It then becomes the egoic mind and takes over your whole life.”

• “The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

• “What you think of as the past is a memory trace, stored in the mind, of a former Now. When you remember the past, you reactivate a memory trace and you do so now. The future is an imagined Now, a projection of the mind.”

• “Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time.”

• “The mind cannot know the tree. It can only know facts or information about the tree. My mind cannot know you, only labels, judgments, facts, and opinions about you. Being alone knows directly.”

• “heavy burden of psychological time. If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the”

• “If you set yourself a goal and work toward it, you are using clock time. You are aware of where you want to go, but you honor and give your fullest attention to the step that you are taking at this moment. If you then become excessively focused on the goal, perhaps because you are seeking happiness, fulfillment, or a more complete sense of self in it, the Now is no longer honored. It becomes reduced to a mere stepping stone to the future, with no intrinsic value. Clock time then turns into psychological time. Your life’s journey is no longer an adventure, just an obsessive need to arrive, to attain, to “make it.” You no longer see or smell the flowers by the wayside either, nor are you aware of the beauty and the miracle of life that unfolds all around you when you are present in the Now.”

• “belief in a future heaven creates a present hell.”

• “Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”

• “If all your problems or perceived causes of suffering or unhappiness were miraculously removed for you today, but you had not become more present, more conscious, you would soon find yourself with a similar set of problems or causes of suffering, like a shadow that follows you wherever you go.”

• “There is no salvation in time. You cannot be free in the future. Presence is the key to freedom, so you can only be free now.”

• “Hope is what keeps you going, but hope keeps you focused on the future, and this continued focus perpetuates your denial of the Now and therefore your unhappiness.”

• “The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.”

• “Problem” means that you are dwelling on a situation mentally without there being a true intention or possibility of taking action now and that you are unconsciously making it part of your sense of self. You become so overwhelmed by your life situation that you lose your sense of life, of Being. Or you are carrying in your mind the insane burden of a hundred things that you will or may have to do in the future instead of focusing your attention on the one thing that you can do now.”

• “If you cannot be present even in normal circumstances, such as when you are sitting alone in a room, walking in the woods, or listening to someone, then you certainly won’t be able to stay conscious when something “goes wrong” or you are faced with difficult people or situations, with loss or the threat of loss. You will be taken over by a reaction, which ultimately is always some form of fear, and pulled into deep unconsciousness. Those challenges are your tests.”

• “When you learn to be the witness of your thoughts and emotions, which is an essential part of being present, you may be surprised when you first become aware of the background “static” of ordinary unconsciousness and realize how rarely, if ever, you are truly at ease within yourself. On the level of your thinking, you will find a great deal of resistance in the form of judgment, discontent, and mental projection away from the Now. On the emotional level, there will be an undercurrent of unease, tension, boredom, or nervousness. Both are aspects of the mind in its habitual resistance mode.”

• “Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease.”

• “Once you realize that a certain kind of food makes you sick, would you carry on eating that food and keep asserting that it is okay to be sick?”

• “When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power.”

• “is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.”

• “Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. Its a split that tears you apart inside.”

• “Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don’t want the present. You don’t want what you’ve got, and you want what you haven’t got.”

• “So give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting … snap out of it. Come into the present moment.”

• “Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.”

• “gain the world and lose your soul,” as Jesus puts it. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to “fail” sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things.”

• “Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to “fail” sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose.”

• “The past cannot survive in your presence. It can only survive in your absence.”

• “What do you mean by “rooted within yourself”? It means to inhabit your body fully. To always have some of your attention in the inner energy field of your body. To feel the body from within, so to speak. Body awareness keeps you present.”

• “If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call it John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish thats tragic. But ifs only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of a dynamic process, a molecular dance, and made a separate entity out of it.”

• “Consciousness takes on the disguise of forms until they reach such complexity that it completely loses itself in them.”

• “The teacher and the taught together create the teaching.”

• “Even if there is noise, there is always some silence underneath and in between the sounds. Listening to the silence immediately creates stillness inside you.”

• “You can study and talk about honey for as long as you like, but you won’t really know it until you taste it. After you have tasted it, the word becomes less important to you. You won’t be attached to it anymore.”

• “An image, no matter how beautiful or powerful, is already defined in form, so there is less scope for penetrating more deeply.”

• “The light of their consciousness was not yet strong enough to make friends with their animal nature, to allow it to be and even enjoy that aspect of themselves let alone to go deeply into it to find the divine hidden within it, the reality within the illusion. So they did what they had to do. They began to disassociate from their body. They now saw themselves as having a body, rather than just being it.”

• “Forgiveness is to offer no resistance to life to allow life to live through you.”

• “Before you enter the temple, forgive.”

• “In any thought activity, make it a habit to go back and forth every few minutes or so between thinking and an inner kind of listening, an inner stillness. We could say. don’t just think with your head, think with your whole body.”

• “opening up. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be.”

• “Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part 0fevery sound, every musical note, every song, every word.”

• “Everybody pays attention to the things in space, but who pays attention to space itself?”

• “Once you have a theory, ifs not too hard to find evidence to substantiate it, at least until some other theory comes along.”

• “At least two points of reference are needed for distance and space to come into being. Space comes into being the moment the One becomes two, and as “two” become the “ten thousand things,” as Lao Tse calls the manifested world, space becomes more and more vast. So world and space arise simultaneously.”

• “If there were no illusion, there would be no enlightenment.”

• “You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation.”

• “The positive already contains within itself the as yet unmanifested negative. Both are in fact different aspects of the same dysfunction.”

• “The reason why the romantic love relationship is such an intense and universally sought-after experience is that it seems to offer liberation from a deep-seated state of fear, need, lack, and incompleteness that is part of the human condition in its unredeemed and unenlightened state.”

• “Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.”

• “To disidentify from thinking is to be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior, especially the repetitive patterns of your mind and the roles played by the ego.”

• “The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.”

• “when you know there is disharmony and you hold that “knowing,” through your knowing a new factor has come in, and the disharmony cannot remain unchanged.”

• “You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”

• “Judgment is either to confuse someone’s unconscious behavior with who they are or to project your own unconsciousness onto another person and mistake that for who they are.”

• “It is not easy to live with an enlightened person, or rather it is so easy that the ego finds it extremely threatening.”

• “As a general rule, the major obstacle for men tends to be the thinking mind, and the major obstacle for women the pain-body, although in certain individual cases the opposite may be true, and in others the two factors may be equal.”

• “if you are trapped in a nightmare you will probably be more strongly motivated to awaken than someone who is just caught in the ups and downs of an ordinary dream.”

• “A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of the truth.”

• “In Being, male and female are one. Your form may continue to have certain needs, but Being has none. It is already complete and whole. If those needs are met, that is beautiful, but whether or not they are met makes no difference to your deep inner state. So it is perfectly possible for an enlightened person, if the need for the male or female polarity is not met, to feel a sense of lack or incompleteness on the outer level of his or her being, yet at the same time be totally complete, fulfilled, and at peace within. In”

• “Acute unhappiness can be a great awakener.”

• “Happiness depends on conditions being perceived as positive; inner peace does not.”

• “For example, when a loved one has just died, or you feel your own death approaching, you cannot be happy. It is impossible. But you can be at peace. There may be sadness and tears, but provided that you have relinquished resistance, underneath the sadness you will feel a deep serenity, a stillness, a sacred presence. This is the emanation of Being, this is inner peace, the good that has no opposite.”

• “Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs?”

• “You cannot have an argument with a fully conscious person.”

• “No one who is at one with himself can even conceive of conflict,”

• “Growth is usually considered positive, but nothing can grow forever.”

• “The cyclical nature of the universe is closely linked with the impermanence of all things and situations.”

• “The happiness that is derived from some secondary source is never very deep.”

• “Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you come across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the human mind and its insanity.”

• “When you have reached a certain degree of presence, you don’t need negativity anymore to tell you what is needed in your life situation. But as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as a kind of signal that reminds you to be more present.”

• “Even the slightest irritation is significant and needs to be acknowledged and looked at; otherwise, there will be a cumulative build-up of unobserved reactions.”

• “As an alternative to dropping a negative reaction, you can make it disappear by imagining yourself becoming transparent to the external cause of the reaction.”

• “When you accept what is, every piece of meat every moment is the best. That is enlightenment.”

• “You don’t resist change by mentally clinging to any situation. Your inner peace does not depend on it. You abide in Being unchanging, timeless, deathless and you are no longer dependent for fulfillment or happiness on the outer world of constantly fluctuating forms. You can enjoy them, play with them, create new forms, appreciate the beauty of it all. But there will be no need to attach yourself to any of it.”

• “Compassion is the awareness of a deep bond between yourself and all creatures.”

• “Surrender is a purely inner phenomenon. It does not mean that on the outer level you cannot take action and change the situation.”

• ”¤ If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable, it is only by surrendering first that you can break the unconscious resistance pattern”

• “If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable, it is only by surrendering first that you can break the unconscious resistance pattern that perpetuates that situation.”

• “Surrender is perfectly compatible with taking action, initiating change or achieving goals. But in the surrendered state a totally different energy, a different quality, flows into your doing.”

• “Look at the lilies, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.”

• “Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does do not resist what is. If there is no action you can take, and you cannot remove yourself from the situation either, then use the situation to make you go more deeply into surrender, more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being. When you enter this timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part. Life becomes helpful and cooperative.”

• “In Taoism, there is a term called wu wei, which is usually translated as “actionless activity” or “sitting quietly doing nothing.” In ancient China, this was regarded as one of the highest achievements or virtues. It is radically different from inactivity in the ordinary state of consciousness, or rather unconsciousness, which stems from fear, inertia, or indecision. The real “doing nothing” implies inner nonresistance and intense alertness. On the other hand, if action is required, you will no longer react from your conditioned mind, but you will respond to the situation out of your conscious presence. In that state, your mind is free of concepts, including the concept of nonviolence. So who can predict what you will do?”

• “Withdraw time from the illness. Do not give it any past or future. Let it force you into intense present-moment awareness and see what happens.”

• “The condition that is labeled “illness” has nothing to do with who you truly are.”

• “If you cannot accept what is outside, then accept what is inside. If you cannot accept the external condition, accept the internal condition. This means: Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labeling it mentally. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace.”

• “Suffering does not diminish in intensity when you make it unconscious.”

• “The mind, conditioned as it is by the past, always seeks to re- create what it knows and is familiar with. Even if it is painful, at least it is familiar. The mind always adheres to the known. The unknown is dangerous because it has no control over it. Thats why the mind dislikes and ignores the present moment. Present-moment awareness creates a gap not only in the stream of mind but also in the past-future continuum. Nothing truly new and creative can come into this world except through that gap, that clear space of infinite possibility.”

• “What comes to mind when we ask “Who am I?” consists of those things we have been paying attention to over the years. The same goes for our impressions of other people. The reality that appears to us is not so much what’s out there as it is those aspects of the world we have focused on.”

• “Before we can develop attentional stability, we first need to learn to relax.”

• “We are all aware of the way the body heals itself. Physicians don’t heal abrasions, and surgeons don’t mend bone fractures. Instead, they do whatever they can to allow the body to heal itself—by keeping the wound clean, setting the broken bone, and so on. These are so common that it’s easy to lose sight of the extraordinary nature of the body’s own healing power.”

• “When a stream is polluted, one may try to add antidotes to the toxins in the water, hoping such additives will neutralize the damage. But the more straightforward and sensible approach is simply to stop the flow of contamination into the stream. When this is done, over time the flow of the water through soil, stones, and vegetation can purify the stream completely.”

• “Genuine happiness is a symptom of a balanced, healthy mind, just as a sense of physical well-being is a sign of a healthy body.”

• “We do not exist independently from others, so our well-being cannot arise independently of others either.”

• “The reason we don’t devote more time to balancing our minds is that we are betting our lives that we can find the happiness we seek by chasing fleeting pleasures.”

• “However busy we may be, or think we are, no one is paying us enough to have demands on our minds every single moment of the day.”

• “In the seen there is only the seen; in the heard, there is only the heard; in the sensed, there is only the sensed; in the mentally perceived, there is only the mentally perceived.”

• “to divide your attention, consider your priorities. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well, and if something’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing at all.”

• “When you start to experience the inner calm, simplicity, and quietude of shamatha practice, you may become attached to this state of mind, and that can result in apathetic indifference to those around you and the world at large. You’ve got your own quiet space of serenity, and you may not want to be disturbed. The worthy venture of meditative training becomes derailed when it results in such complacency; it can become little more than a substitute for Prozac or Valium. The real aim of this practice is to cultivate mental balance that results in genuine happiness, and indifference to others is not a sign of genuine happiness or mental health.”

• “The quality of our lives reflects the ways we have cultivated our minds until now.”

• “Virtually anything may catalyze unhappiness, but its true source is always in the mind.”

• “Solitary meditation doesn’t cause mental imbalances, but uncovers them. Boredom may set in, especially when the mind succumbs to laxity, and restlessness often comes in the wake of excitation. With perseverance you can move beyond these imbalances and begin to discover the well-being that arises from a balanced mind. But this requires courage to face your own inner demons and persist in the practice despite the emotional upheavals that are bound to occur in the course of this training.”

• “those who have accustomed themselves to having few desires and contentment can find joy in solitude, whereas those who have not found such equilibrium are bound either to sink into laxity and depression or to float up into excitation and restlessness.”

• “What you make doesn’t have to be witnessed, recorded, sold, or encased in glass for it to be a work of art.”

• “by the mere fact of being alive, we are active participants in the ongoing process of creation.”

• “Attuned choice by attuned choice, your entire life is a form of self-expression. You exist as a creative being in a creative universe. A singular work of art.”

• “The taste and beauty are in the eye of the beholder.”

• “If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.”

• “The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply.”

• “Artists who are able to continually create great works throughout their lives often manage to preserve these childlike qualities. Practicing a way of being that allows you to see the world through uncorrupted, innocent eyes can free you to act in concert with the universe’s timetable.”

• “Clouds never truly disappear. They change form. They turn into rain and become part of the ocean, and then evaporate and return to being clouds. The same is true of art.”

• “As soon as you label an aspect of Source, you’re no longer noticing, you’re studying.”

• “Analysis is a secondary function. The awareness happens first as a pure connection with the object of your attention. If something strikes me as interesting or beautiful, first I live that experience. Only afterward might I attempt to understand it.”

• “The universe is only as large as our perception of it.”

• “doesn’t fit easily within the limits of our belief system. The more raw data we can take in, and the”

• “The more raw data we can take in, and the less we shape it, the closer we get to nature.”

• “One can think of the creative act as taking the sum of our vessel’s contents as potential material, selecting for elements that seem useful or significant in the moment, and re-presenting them. This is Source drawn through us and made into books, movies, buildings, paintings, meals, businesses—whatever projects we embark on. If we choose to share what we make, our work can recirculate and become source material for others.”

• “What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.”

• “The world of reason can be narrow and filled with dead ends, while a spiritual viewpoint is limitless and invites fantastic possibilities. The unseen world is boundless.”

• “The practice of spirituality is a way of looking at a world where you’re not alone. There are deeper meanings behind the surface. The energy around you can be harnessed to elevate your work. You are part of something much larger than can be explained—a world of immense possibilities.”

• “If a piece of work, a fragment of consciousness, or an element of nature is somehow allowing us to access something bigger, that is its spiritual component made manifest. It awards us a glimpse of the unseen.”

• “If we aren’t looking for clues, they’ll pass by without us ever knowing. Notice connections and consider where they lead.”

• “the universe is nudging you with little reminders that it’s on your side and wants to provide everything you need to complete your mission.”

• “Look for what you notice but no one else sees.”

• “Awareness needs constant refreshing. If it becomes a habit, even a good habit, it will need to be reinvented again and again. Until one day, you notice that you are always in the practice of awareness, at all times, in all places, living your life in a state of constant openness to receiving.”

• “Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.”

• “The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”

• “Because there’s an endless amount of data available to us and we have a limited bandwidth to conserve, we might consider carefully curating the quality of what we allow in.”

• “Of all the great works that we can experience, nature is the most absolute and enduring. We can witness it change through the seasons. We”

• “We don’t have to understand nature to appreciate it. This is true of all things. Simply be aware of moments when your breath”

• “We don’t have to understand nature to appreciate it. This is true of all things. Simply be aware of moments when your breath gets taken away by something of great beauty.”

• “Nature transcends our tendencies to label and classify, to reduce and limit.”

• “It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror.”

• “Even if an element seems static, whether a work of art in a museum or an everyday object in a kitchen, when we look at it deeply, we can see a newness. We recognize aspects unnoticed before. Reread the same book over and over, and we’ll likely find new themes, undercurrents, details, and connections.”

• “You can’t step into the same stream”

• “Our inner world is every bit as interesting, beautiful, and surprising as nature itself. It is, after all, born of nature.”

• “Ultimately, it doesn’t make a difference whether your content originates on the inside or the outside. If a beautiful thought or phrase comes to mind, or if you see a beautiful sunset, one’s not better than the other. Both are equally beautiful in different ways. It’s helpful to consider there are always more options available to us than we might realize.”

• “It isn’t uncommon, out of the gibberish, for a story to unfold or key phrases to appear.”

• “sleep. Memories can also be thought of as dreamlike. They’re more a romantic”

• “Memories can also be thought of as dreamlike. They’re more a romantic story than a faithful document of a life event.”

• “Tomorrow presents another opportunity for awareness, but it’s never an opportunity for the same awareness.”

• “It helps to realize that it’s better to follow the universe than those around you.”

• “Self-doubt lives in all of us. And while we may wish it gone, it is there to serve”

• “Flaws are human, and the attraction of art is the humanity held in it. If we were machinelike, the art wouldn’t resonate. It would be soulless. With life comes pain, insecurity, and fear.”

• “If a creator is so afraid of judgment that they’re unable to move forward, it might be that the desire to share the work isn’t as strong as the desire to protect themselves. Perhaps art isn’t their role. Their temperament might serve a different pursuit. This path is not for everyone. Adversity is part of the process.”

• “One of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses early in their lives is because they’re using drugs to numb a very painful existence. The reason it’s painful is the reason they became artists in the first place: their incredible sensitivity.”

• “If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you’re confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming. When those around you don’t see what you see and feel what you feel, this can lead to a sense of isolation and a general feeling of not belonging, of otherness.”

• “All art is a work in progress.”

• “some things are too important to be taken seriously.”

• “the Buddhist concept of papancha, which translates as preponderance of thoughts. This speaks to the mind’s tendency to respond to our experiences with an avalanche of mental chatter.”

• “The imperfections you’re tempted to fix might prove to be what make the work great. And sometimes not.”

• “Distraction is one of the best tools available to the artist when used skillfully. In some cases, it’s the only way to get where we are going.”

• “Nothing begins with us. The more we pay attention, the more we begin to realize that all the work we ever do is a collaboration.”

• “The inspired-artist aspect of your self may be in conflict with the craftsperson aspect, disappointed that the craftsperson is unable to create the physical embodiment of the inspired artist’s vision.”

• “A painting is just a painting until you put a frame on it and hang it on the wall, then it’s called art. What’s considered art is simply an agreement. And none of it is true.”

• “A completed project is only made up of our intention and our experiments around it. Remove intention and all that’s left is the ornamental shell.”

• “Not all projects take time, but they do take a lifetime.”

• “Most creators think of themselves as the conductor of the orchestra. If we zoom out of our small view of reality, we function more as an instrumentalist in a much larger symphony the universe is orchestrating. We may not have a great understanding of what this magnum opus is because we only see the small part we play.”

• “Similarly, the total output of human creativity, in all its kaleidoscopic breadth, pieces together the fabric forming our culture. The underlying intention of our work is the aspect allowing it to fit neatly into this fabric. Rarely if ever do we know the grand intention, yet if we surrender to the creative impulse, our singular piece of the puzzle takes its proper shape.”

• “Intention is all there is. The work is just a reminder.”

• “Rules, by their nature, are limitations.”

• “Rules direct us to average behaviors. If we’re aiming to create works that are exceptional, most rules don’t apply. Average is nothing to aspire to. The goal is not to fit in. If anything, it’s to amplify the differences, what doesn’t fit, the special characteristics unique to how you see the world. Instead of sounding like others, value your own voice. Develop it. Cherish it.”

• “The reason to make art is to innovate and self-express, show something new, share what’s inside, and communicate your singular perspective.”

• “In the beginning, we approach our craft with a template of what’s come before.”

• “As soon as you use a label to describe what you’re working on, there’s a temptation to conform to its rules.”

• “Often, the most innovative ideas come from those who master the rules to such a degree that they can see past them or from those who never learned them at all.”

• “Rules obeyed unconsciously are far stronger than the ones set on purpose.”

• “Holding every rule as breakable is a healthy way to live as an artist. It loosens constraints that promote a predictable sameness in our working methods.”

• “Once you have a new framework, some elements of your older process may find their way back into the work, and that’s okay.”

• “For any rules you accept of what you can and cannot do as an artist … of what your voice is and isn’t … of what’s required to do the work and what you don’t need … it would be worthwhile to try the opposite.”

• “Think of a rule as an imbalance.”

• “Though to say that we listen with the ears, or the mind, might be a misconception. We listen with the whole body, our whole self.”

• “Many of us experience life as if we’re taking it in through a pair of headphones. We strip away the full register. We hear information, but don’t detect the subtler vibrations of feeling in the body.”

• “If it’s music you’re listening to, consider closing your eyes. You may find yourself getting lost in the experience. When the piece ends, you might be surprised by where you find yourself. You’ve been transported to another place. The place where the music lives.”

• “Formulating an opinion is not listening. Neither is preparing a response, or defending our position or attacking another’s. To listen impatiently is to hear nothing at all.”

• “Listening is suspending disbelief.”

• “More often than not, there are no right answers, just different perspectives.”

• “Many of our beliefs were learned before we had a choice in what we were taught. Some of them might go back generations and may no longer apply. Some may never have applied.”

• “The lottery winner isn’t ultimately happy after their sudden change of fortune. The home built hastily rarely survives the first storm. The single-sentence summary of a book or news event is no substitute for the full story.”

• “Re-reading even a well-understood paragraph or page can be revelatory.”

• “Our continual quest for efficiency discourages looking too deeply.”

• “Impatience is an argument with reality.”

• “When it comes to the creative process, patience is accepting that the majority of the work we do is out of our control. We can’t force greatness to happen. All we can do is invite it in and await it actively. Not anxiously, as this might scare it off. Simply in a state of continual welcoming.”

• “If we remove time from the equation of a work’s development, what we’re left with is patience.”

• “Even the masterpieces that have been produced on tight timelines are the sum of decades spent patiently laboring on other works.”

• “What was it that allowed a machine to devise a move no one steeped in the game had ever made in thousands of years of play? It wasn’t necessarily its intelligence. It was the fact that the machine learned the game from scratch, with no coach, no human intervention, no lessons based on an expert’s past experience. The AI followed the fixed rules, not the millennia of accepted cultural norms attached to them. It didn’t take into account the three-thousand-year-old traditions and conventions of Go. It didn’t accept the narrative of how to properly play this game. It wasn’t held back by limiting beliefs.”

• “One Go expert commented, “After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong … I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go.”

• “To see what no human has seen before, to know what no human has known before, to create as no human has created before, it may be necessary to see as if through eyes that have never seen, know through a mind that has never thought, create with hands that have never been trained.”

• “Did the computer win because it knew more than the grandmaster or because it knew less?”

• “Experience provides wisdom to draw from, but it tempers the power of naivete.”

• “The more ingrained your adopted approach, the harder it is to see past it.”

• “Just as an infant is selfish, they’re protective of their art in a way that’s not always cooperative.”

• “A child has no set of premises it relies on to make sense of the world. It may serve you to do the same. Any label you assume before sitting down to create, even one as foundational as sculptor, rapper, author, or entrepreneur, could be doing more harm than good. Strip away the labels. Now how do you see the world?”

• “If you spent your whole life living near the ocean, your experience of it would almost certainly be less dramatic.”

• “As artists, we aim to live in a way in which we see the extraordinary hidden in the seemingly mundane. Then challenge ourselves to share what we see in a way that allows others a glimpse of this remarkable beauty.”

• “For the lungs to draw in air, they must first be emptied. For the mind to draw inspiration, it wants space to welcome the new. The universe seeks balance. Through this absence, you are inviting energy in.”

• “To vary your inspiration, consider varying your inputs. Turn the sound off to watch a film, listen to the same song on repeat, read only the first word of each sentence in a short story, arrange stones by size or color, learn to lucid dream.”

• “The work yielded may not be used in the current project, but it may be of use another time. Or it may not. The task of the artist is simply to recognize the transmission and stay with it in gratitude, until it truly runs its course.”

• “In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.”

• “A full, imperfect version is generally more helpful than a seemingly perfect fragment.”

• “Wooden often said the only person you’re ever competing against is yourself. The rest is out of your control.”

• “If you set a routine that is oppressive, you’ll likely find excuses not to show up. It’s in the interest of your art to create an easily achievable schedule to start with.”

• “As if catching fish, we walk to the water, bait the hook, cast the line, and patiently wait. We cannot control the fish, only the presence of our line.”

• “The work reveals itself as you go.”

• “Not every seed must grow. But it may be there is a right time for each one. If a seed does not seem to be developing or responding, consider storing it rather than discarding it. In nature, some seeds lie dormant in anticipation of the season most conducive to their growth. This is true of art as well. There are ideas whose time has not yet come. Or perhaps their time has come, but you are not yet ready to engage with them. Other times, developing a different seed may shed light on a dormant one.”

• “As we lose enthusiasm, we often continue to labor on a seed, believing that the work has to turn out for the better because we’ve invested so much time in it. If the energy continues to drop, it does not necessarily mean that the seed is bad. We just may not have found the right experiment for it. Perhaps we need to step away for a time and shift perspective.”

• “Excitement tends to be the best barometer for selecting which seeds to focus on. When something interesting starts to come together, it arouses delight. It’s an energizing feeling of wanting more. A feeling of leaning forward. Follow that energy.”

• “There is a gap between imagination and reality. An idea might seem brilliant in our mind. But once employed, it might not work at all. Another might seem dreary at first. Then, upon execution, it might be exactly what’s called for. To dismiss an idea because it”

• “Descriptions do not do ideas justice.”

• “Art may only exist, and the artist may only evolve, by completing the work.”

• “While crafting, make deadlines for your own motivation, not necessarily to be shared with others unless it helps with accountability. Once the Craft phase is nearing an end, then we might start thinking in terms of fixed deadlines.”

• “Art is a reflection of the artist’s inner and outer world during the period of creation. Extending the period complicates the artist’s ability to capture a state of being. The result can be a loss of connection and enthusiasm for the work over time.”

• “To avoid demo-itis, there is a simple technique. Unless actively working to make something better, avoid listening to it, reading it, playing it, looking at it, or showing it to friends. Work as far forward as you can while crafting and then step away, without repetitively consuming the unfinished work. By not accepting the work-in-progress as the standard version, we leave room for growth, change, and development to continue.”

• “We mistake the fantasy version of the work in our minds for what the actual work has the possibility to become. There may indeed be times when our mental conception of a piece translates almost directly into the physical realm. At other times, it’s an unrealistic idealized version. And sometimes, our vision for the work is a goal to work toward, and in the process we come to learn we’ll reach a new and unexpected destination.”

• “Falling short of grander visions might actually put the work exactly where it wants to be.”

• “Artists allow us to see what we are unable to see, but somehow already know.”

• “The reason we create art isn’t with the intention of making something useful for someone else. We create to express who we are. Who we are and where we are on our journey.”

• “A point of view is different from having a point.”

• “It’s impossible to imitate another artist’s point of view. We can only swim in the same waters. So feel free to copy the works that inspire you on the road to finding your own voice. It’s a time-tested tradition.”

• “Whatever the situation, if a task is challenging to accomplish, there’s often a way to design the surroundings to naturally encourage the performance you’re striving for.”

• “We interrogate ourselves when we offer our work up to others.”

• “If someone chooses to share feedback, listen to understand the person, not the work. People will tell you more about themselves than about the art when giving feedback. We each see a unique world.”

• “Art doesn’t get made on the clock. But it can get finished on the clock.”

• “When the last chapter is about to end, we may create excuses to put off the completion of the work.”

• “Hanging on to your work is like spending years writing the same entry in a diary. Moments and opportunities are lost. The next works are robbed of being brought to life.”

• “In an environment where nothing is permanent, we produce static artifacts. Mementos of spirit. We hope they’ll live forever, holding resonance through each passing decade. Some might, many won’t. It’s impossible to know. We can only keep building.”

• “If the mind creates a world that is limited, where we think we don’t have enough worthwhile ideas or material, we will not see the inspiration the universe is providing.”

• “Finishers might benefit from taking more time in the early phases. Writing beyond the minimum requirement, experimenting with other materials, considerations, and perspectives. Allowing themselves space for improvisation and surprise in the process. Experimenters might benefit from taking an aspect of the work through to completion. It might be a drawing, a song,or the chapter of a book. Even making one foundational decision from which to build can help.”

• “As artists, we get to create a new set of rules each and every time we play. After careful consideration, we may choose to break them in the midst of a project if a discovery impels us.”

• “We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.”

• “And any story beyond “I want to make the best thing I can make, whatever it is” are all undermining forces in the quest for greatness.”

• “It’s not uncommon to long for outward success, hopeful it will fill a void inside ourselves. Some imagine achievement as a remedy to fix or heal a sense of not being enough.”

• “If you are living in the belief that success will cure your pain, when the treatment comes and doesn’t work, it can lead to hopelessness. A depression can accompany the realization that what you’ve spent most of your life chasing hasn’t fixed your insecurities and vulnerabilities. More likely, with the stakes and consequences now higher, it has only amplified the pressure. And we are never taught how to handle this epic disappointment.”

• “Art has the power to snap us out of our transfixion, open our minds to what’s possible, and reconnect with the eternal energy that moves through all things.”

• “The ecstatic is our compass, pointing to our true north. It arises genuinely in the process of creation. You’re working and struggling, and suddenly you notice a shift. A revelation. A small tweak is made, a new angle is revealed, and it takes your breath away.”

• “So little was needed to make the leap from mediocrity to greatness. The leap can’t always be understood, but when it happens, it’s clear and enlivening.”

• “Many artists come to realize long after their work is released that it was actually a shockingly vulnerable and cryptic form of public confession.”

• “When we don’t have context, new ideas appear foreign or awkward.”

• “Be aware of strong responses. If you’re immediately turned off by an experience, it’s worth examining why. Powerful reactions often indicate deeper wells of meaning. And perhaps by exploring them, you’ll be led to the next step on your creative path.”

• “Art is about the maker. Its aim: to be an expression of who we are. This makes competition absurd.”

• “comparison is the thief of joy.”

• “No system exists that can rank which work is most reflective of the maker. Great art is an invitation, calling to creators everywhere to strive for still higher and deeper levels.”

• “Perfection is finally obtained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there’s no longer anything to take away.”

• “From a distance, what can we know to be true?”

• “We live in a mysterious world full of uncertainties. And we regularly make assumptions to explain them. Coming to terms with the complexity of our human experience allows us to exit our natural state of confusion. To survive. Generally our explanations are guesses. These vague hypotheticals become fixed in our minds as fact. We are interpretation machines, and this process of labeling and detaching is efficient but not accurate. We are the unreliable narrators of our own experience.”

• “Each artist works with their own balance of strengths and weaknesses. And there is no rule that more praiseworthy strengths or romanticized self-destruction equals better art. Expressing yourself is all that matters.”

• “We will never know a work’s true meaning. It’s helpful to remember that there are forces at work beyond our comprehension. Let’s make art, and let others make the stories.”

• “If any distractions come along during that period, don’t ignore them or focus on them. Don’t give them any energy at all. Let them pass, like clouds parting around a mountain.”

• “As artists, we are on a continual quest to get closer to the universe by getting closer to self. Moving ever nearer to the point where we can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends. We’re on a distant metaphysical journey from the here to the now. It’s helpful to work as if the project you’re engaged in is bigger than you.”

• “When you acknowledge a weakness, always consider how it could either be removed or improved before discarding the entire piece.”

• “Many of us are taught to create through sheer will. If we choose surrender, the ideas that want to come through us will not be blocked.”

• “For the artist, whose job is testing possibilities, success is as much ruling out a solution as finding one that works.”

• “In the process of experimentation, we allow ourselves to make mistakes, to go too far, to go even further, to be inept. There is no failure, as every step we take is necessary to reach our destination, including the missteps. Each experiment is valuable in its own way if we learn something from it. Even if we can’t comprehend its worth, we are still practicing our craft, moving ever so much closer to mastery.”

• “Humanity breathes in mistakes.”

• “Making great art may not always require great effort, but without it, you’ll never know.”

• “Creativity is something you are, not only something you do.”

• “Quality isn’t based on the amount of time invested.”

• “If you sit down to write with no preparation or forethought, you might bypass the conscious mind and draw from the unconscious. You may find that what emerges holds a charge that cannot be duplicated through rational means.”

• “If we were to learn anything, it would be to free ourselves from any beliefs or baggage or dogma that gets in the way of us acting according to our true nature. The closer we get to a childlike state of free self-expression, the purer our test and the better our art.”

• “Once a work is complete, no amount of testing can guarantee we’ve made the best possible version. These qualities are not measurable. We test to identify which is the best version from the options at hand.”

• “When the work has five mistakes, it’s not yet completed. When it has eight mistakes, it might be.”

• “If we like what we are creating, we don’t have to know why. Sometimes the reasons are obvious, sometimes not. And they can change over time. It could be good for any of a thousand different reasons. When we’re making things we love, our mission is accomplished. There’s nothing at all to figure out.”

• “Holding your work hostage to meaning is a limitation.”

• “is far more powerful than our plans”

• “Art is far more powerful than our plans for it.”

• “Art is above and beyond judgment. It either speaks to you or it doesn’t. The artist’s only responsibility is to the work itself. There are no other requirements. You’re free to create what you will.”

• “Whether you have a powerful passion or a tortured compulsion, neither makes the art any better or worse. If you are able to choose between these paths, consider selecting the more sustainable one. An artist earns the toc: true title simply through self-expression, as they work in their own way at their own pace.”

• “Established artists generally draw from their personal experience and recommend the solutions that worked for them. These tend to be specific to their journey, not yours. It’s worth remembering that their way is not the way.”

• “The passive element of practice is as important as the active one.”

• “I’m both a professor and student, because if you’re no longer a student, you don’t have the right to call yourself a professor.”

• “If you feel unable to hit a note or faithfully paint an image, it’s helpful to remember that the challenge is not that you can’t do it, but that you haven’t done it yet. Avoid thinking in impossibilities.”

• “Having the knowledge won’t hurt the work. How you use the knowledge may. You have new tools. You don’t have to use them.”

• “If we train ourselves to step away from the work, to truly detach from it, to distract ourselves completely, to dive fully into something else … After being away for a long enough period of time, when we come back, we just may be able to see it as if for the first time.”

• “A way to practice keeping a clean slate is to avoid looking at the work too often. If you finish a section or come to a sticking point, consider putting the project away and not engaging with it for a period of time. Let it sit for a minute, a week, or longer, while you go get lost.”

• “The context changes the content.”

• “The social norms of any time and place are another contextual box that art lives in.”

• “When a piece isn’t living up to your expectations, consider changing the context. Look past the principle element, examine the variables around it. Play with different combinations. Place it next to other works. Surprise yourself.”

• “If the work is thrilling one day and isn’t for a long while after, you may have experienced a false indicator. When the moments of joy seem like a distant memory and the work feels like an obligation to a past idea, this could mean you’ve either gone too far or that particular seed wasn’t actually ready to germinate yet.”

• “Every artist creates a dynamic history. A living museum of finished objects. One work after another. Begun, completed, released. Begun, completed, released. Over and over again. Each a time stamp commemorating a moment of passage. A moment filled with energy, now forever embodied in a work of art.”

• “Within every artist, there’s a child emptying a box of crayons onto the floor, searching for just the right color to draw the sky.”

• “If you’re looking for the work to support you, you may be asking too much of it. We create in service to art, not for what we can get from art.”

• “Creativity is contagious.”

• “If asked to participate in a fellow creator’s project, proceed delicately.”

• “Sometimes the most valuable touch a collaborator can have is no touch at all.”

• “Believing an idea is best because it’s ours is an error of inexperience. The ego demands personal authorship, inflating itself at the expense of the art. It can reject new methods that appear counterintuitive and protect familiar ones.”

• “Great decisions aren’t made in a spirit of sacrifice. They’re made by the mutual recognition of the best solution available.”

• “The more clinical the feedback, the better it will be received.”

• “Our ego can perceive assistance as interference.”

• “It helps to keep in mind that language is an imperfect means of communication.”

• “We like to think of ourselves as consistent, rational beings, possessing certain attributes and not others. Yet a person who is completely consistent, who possesses no contradictions, comes across as less real. Wooden. Plastic.”

• “Art goes deeper than thought. Deeper than the stories about yourself. It breaks through inner walls and accesses what’s behind. If we get out of the way and let the art do its work, it may yield the sincerity we seek. And sincerity may look nothing like we expected.”

• “The editor’s role is to gather and sift. Amplifying what’s vital and whittling away the excess. Culling the work down to the best version of itself.”

• “The editor is required to set ego aside. Ego pridefully attaches to individual elements of a work. The editor’s role is to remain unattached and see beyond these passions to find unity and balance. Talented artists who are unskilled editors can”

• “The editor is required to set ego aside. Ego pridefully attaches to individual elements of a work. The editor’s role is to remain unattached and see beyond these passions to find unity and balance. Talented artists who are unskilled editors can do subpar work and fail to live up to their gift’s promise.”

• “As we move closer to the completion of a project, it can be helpful to drastically cut the work back to only what’s necessary, to conduct a ruthless edit.”

• “Making the simple complicated is commonplace,” Charles Mingus once said. “Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

• “Art is a reverberation of an impermanent life.”

• “Just as each small stroke on a canvas can’t step aside to see the whole painting, we’re unable to take in the great whole of relationships and counterbalance that surrounds us in all directions.”

• “The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.”

• “The widespread use of chopsticks shaped the development of Chinese cuisine—the reason there’s so much preparatory chopping involved in making a Chinese meal is because dishes had to consist of bite-size pieces that could easily be grasped with chopsticks, since nothing was sliced at the table.”

• “As she fingered the pamphlets, I realized it was new to her, this idea of vegetarianism not as a mark of poverty but a conscious lifestyle choice, and coming from my place of privilege, I hadn’t understood her wariness about it.”

• “The golden rule of beauraucracy, give me a problem, and Im willing to spend any amount of someone elses money to solve it”

• “the less money the higher the expectations”

• “Life feels more romantic when life is a performance when youre mimicking what that romantic scene is in the film that you saw.”

• “It’s harder to see than to paint.”

• “When you’re a people-pleaser, you unconsciously wear a facade of niceness that hides your true feelings from your family, colleagues, friends, lovers — essentially giving up your needs for the sake of everyone else’s. For years I thought that niceness was one of my best, most pure qualities. Only recently have I realized that this was how I tried to protect myself and, in fact, was an attempt to control what other people thought of me.”

• “People-pleasing had so fundamentally shaped my relationship to myself and was a deep layer that had kept me from living authentically for the vast majority of my life. I’d been playing a role instead of being a person.”

• “Do you dedicate more time to other people than yourself? Have you neglected self-care, because you’re just too busy taking care of others? If the answer is yes, then it’s time to re-evaluate your priorities.”

• “The more action you take, the more you want to take action”

• “When you add value to people’s lives, they are eager to share your story with everyone”

• “It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”

• “Pretend its like eating the last candy you will ever eat in your life”

• “ather than just accepting, what I learned is that you have to also appreciate what’s right in front of you including the simple things. It’s the small details that actually matter.”

• “Creative people do not have the gift of novelty, they have the gift of being able to turn large amounts of chaotic information into order”

• “Growing up we learn feeling words from adults who simultaneously shame us for using them.”

• “Young man, don’t be too rampant. The road of life is still very long”

• “Some would say. “All problems that could be solved with money are not problems.” Clearly those who say that are all rich people.”

• “The greatness of any artform cannot be in the technique, as important as technique is. Nobody loves a song because the singer hit all the notes correctly. They love it because the melodies and rhythms and interactions of the instruments give them a feeling. It’s the same with imagery. Good composers know how to create an image that haunts, or entertains, or somehow emotionally involves a viewer, and that happens on a primal level through compositional choices. And even though I believe it is a talent, it is realized through practice and training. As with music. Musicians and artists both compose. The good ones move our emotions”

• “A wound can only begin healing when it’s noticed and attended to.”

• “History only seems simple, unified and natural when we forget about all the voices that go unheard.”

• “People are strange when you’re a stranger Faces look ugly when you’re alone Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted Streets are uneven when you’re down When you’re strange faces come out of the rain When you’re strange no one remembers your name”

• “Kant saw humanity as a race mature enough to leave home but not mature enough to know how to live well alone”

• “The world is but a stage. Why cry, when you can laugh instead? For laughter is humanity’s preserve. Laugh it all off, fret not, Let’s just enjoy the moment.”

• “Dread is anxiety on steroids,”

• “For us vertebrates, the core of the stress-response is built around the fact that your muscles are going to work like crazy.”

• “The stress response cycle needs to complete, and just eliminating the stressor isn’t enough to do that.”

• “This is the upside-down world we live in: in most situations in the modern, post-industrial West, the stress itself will kill you faster than the stressor will—unless you do something to complete the stress response cycle.”

• “Just don’t forget that these survival strategies do not deal with the stress itself. They postpone your body’s need to complete the cycle; they don’t replace it.”

• “If anxiety starts, it ends.” “It just ends?” “Yeah. If you let it, it just ends.”

• “Wellness is not a state of being, but a state of action.”

• “When something feels uncomfortable, you’re probably doing something that creates more and better progress than if it were easy.”

• “Or, as Douglas Adams’s character Dirk Gently puts it, “I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere that I needed to be”

• “Part of recovering from a loss is turning toward your grief with kindness and compassion, as well as completing the cycle of stress brought on by failure. But another part is recognizing failing’s unintended positive outcomes.”

• “Heck no. Sometimes you need to close the door on the world and allow yourself to feel comfortable and safe—as long as it’s not the only thing you’re doing. Think of it as a short-term survival strategy. You also need a plan and a sense of what value there is in the struggle.”

• “When you paint the dingiest wall in a room, it just makes the other walls look dingier.”

• “It’s normal for change to be difficult. Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Sometimes a solution to one problem creates another. Sometimes there’s not enough organization and positive attitude in the world to save a marriage. Sometimes—as Julie would eventually find—what it takes to save a marriage is saving yourself.”

• “We have been taught that letting go of a goal is the same as failing. We share stories of people overcoming the odds to achieve remarkable things in the face of great resistance, which is inspiring. But these stories too often imply that we are the controllers of our destinies—as if we control the amount of nuts and seeds in a particular patch of forest. If we “fail” to achieve a goal, it’s because there is something wrong with us. We didn’t fight hard enough. We didn’t “believe.”

• “But there is a deep, wide chasm between us and the realization of those possibilities. Our default action in the face of that chasm is to do whatever it takes to get to the other side, and keep on doing it, no matter what, until we get there. But then we get exhausted and we wonder if we can accomplish any of the things we hope for, without destroying ourselves in the process.”

• “That freedom comes when we have abundance enough and safety enough to let go of what is broken and reach for something new.”

• “You can chart the progress of women in America by the things Disney heroines sing about in their “I Want” songs.”

• “Meaning is the feeling that you “matter in some larger sense. Lives may be experienced as meaningful when they are felt to have significance beyond the trivial or momentary, to have purpose, or to have a coherence that transcends chaos.”

• “But rarely is meaning something that we find at the end of a long, hard journey. For most of us, meaning is what sustains us on the long, hard journey, no matter what we find at the end. Meaning is not found; it is made.”

• “When an airplane bounces into a sudden pocket of turbulence, you grab the arms of your seat, as if by holding your seat, you can hold the plane steady. You, of course, know it doesn’t work that way, but your hands don’t. They will hold on to anything they can reach, and the very fact of holding on makes the turbulence more tolerable.”

• “We are not our own worst enemy. Nor is the enemy the other people in the game. The enemy is the game itself, which tries to convince us that it’s not the enemy.”

• “Self-care” is, indeed, selfish because it uses personal resources to promote a giver’s well-being, rather than someone else’s.”

• “In so many ways, most of us tend to ignore or forget about advantages we’ve received, but remember the obstacles we’ve overcome, because the struggle against the obstacles requires more effort and energy than the easy parts.”

• “Just because the road looks flat doesn’t mean it is. Just because you can’t see the ocean doesn’t mean it’s not there. You can infer the landscape by looking at the shapes of the people who grew in those environments. Instead of wondering why they aren’t thriving on the level playing field, imagine how the field can be changed to allow everyone to thrive.”

• “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

• “All your body requires of you is that you turn toward it with kindness and compassion, with nonjudgment and plain-vanilla acceptance of all your contradictory emotions, beliefs, and longings.”

• “Everyone is the new hotness. You are the new hotness. So is she. So are they. So are we.”

• “Many of us have grown into world-class ignorers of our own needs, just as we were taught to be. We don’t even notice that we’re ignoring our needs. Our bodies are sending us all kinds of signals, but we live from the neck up, only attending to the noise in our heads and shutting out the noise coming from the other 95 percent of our internal experience.”

• “Contact with another person is a basic biological need; loneliness is a form of starvation.”

• “We’re made of energy. The nature of energy is to be shared, to spread, to connect one thing to another. Sharing space with other people means that our energy influences theirs, and theirs influences ours. It’s physics. And psychology. And unavoidable. And amazing.”

• “people tend to take better care of themselves when they’re in a high-quality relationship. In other words, our “self-care” is facilitated by the ways we care for and are cared for by someone else.”

• “Rage gives you strength and energy and the urge to fight, and sharing that energy in the Bubble changes it from something potentially dangerous to something safe and potentially transformative.”

• “The pleasure of synchronized movement is built into our biology, and it’s a powerful tool to access your greatest well-being.”

• “When it’s inconvenient, it’s probably doing the most for you.”

• “What makes you stronger is whatever happens to you after you survive the thing that didn’t kill you. What makes you stronger is rest.”

• “You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”

• “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

• “Mental rest is not idleness; it is the time necessary for your brain to process the world.”

• “Boredom is the discomfort you experience when your brain is in active-attention mode, but can’t latch on to anything to attend”

• “Everybody knows a muscle that isn’t used will atrophy. We all know a muscle that is worked constantly, without rest, will grow fatigued and eventually fail in exhaustion. And we all know a muscle that gets worked and rested and worked and rested will grow stronger.”

• “Our whole body, including our brain, is working hard as we sleep, to accomplish life-preserving tasks that can be best achieved when we’re not around to interfere.”

• “If you’ve dealt with the stressors but haven’t dealt with the stress itself, your brain won’t let you rest. It will constantly scan for the lion that’s about to”

• “If you’ve dealt with the stressors but haven’t dealt with the stress itself, your brain won’t let you rest. It will constantly scan for the lion that’s about to come after you, so when you try to go to sleep, your brain won’t let you fall asleep, or it will wake you up over and over, checking for that lion. Complete the cycle, so your brain can transition into rest.”

• “I don’t want a doctor who’s been awake for twenty hours; I don’t want a lawyer who bills more than twelve hours a day—I know how sloppy work gets when somebody is fatigued—and you shouldn’t want an engineer who isn’t sleeping seven hours a night. Your work is crap if your brain isn’t rested.”

• “Hi, rage. I know our family raised us to believe we didn’t matter unless we were perfect, and perfect means we never stop working, and it’s right to be angry that we didn’t get the warm, unconditional acceptance every child is born deserving. Let’s treat ourselves as we wanted to be treated, granting ourselves permission to be human.”

• “Mine is more like a teenage version: the smart, quiet, yet sad and downtrodden girl who always sat in the back of class and no one talked to….When something goes wrong, I can hear her ‘told you so’ voice in the back of my mind.”

• “This uncomfortable, fragile part of ourselves serves a very important function. She grew inside us, to manage the chasm between who we are and who Human Giver Syndrome expects us to be. She is the part of us that has the impossible, tormenting task of bridging the unbridgeable chasm between us and this “expected-us.” It’s a form of torture, like Sisyphus rolling a rock up a hill only to have it roll back down each time. She’s forever oscillating from rage to helpless despair.”

• “Listen to her stories—never forgetting she’s a madwoman. Remind her that you are the grown-up, the homeowner, or the teacher, and she can trust you to maintain the attic so that she always has a safe place to stay. Thank her for the hard work she has done to help you survive.”

• “Guilt is, ‘I made a mistake.’ Shame is, ‘I am a mistake.’ ” With guilt, as opposed to shame, there is at least a pretense that one day you might deserve to participate fully in the human experience. With shame, your core self is judged.”

• “Are we really working toward our goals only because we’ll torture ourselves if we stop, so that as soon as we put down the whip we’ll sink into eternal apathy? Of course not. In fact, it’s the opposite: We only whip ourselves because our goals matter so much that we’re willing to suffer this self-inflicted pain if that’s what it takes. And we believe that because we’ve always done it that way, it must be why we’ve accomplished as much as we have.”

• “When people with depression try to be self-reassuring, their brains respond with threat activation.12 In fact, fear of compassion for self is linked to fear of compassion from others. That means that somewhere inside them, they believe that if they’re isolated, that’s good; isolation protects others from their real, core badness.”

• “And she realized “Perfect Julie” was just a defense she had constructed, to protect her real madwoman—who wasn’t a woman at all, but a little girl. This little girl was sensitive and afraid of rejection. She loved books and theater. She put on “Perfect Julie” the way a little girl might put on her mother’s shoes and lipstick, playing pretend. She wore “adulting” as a costume. It had been a game at first, like playing house, back when she was Diana’s age. But as Julie had gotten older, the Perfect Julie costume became necessary to disguise the fact that she was, underneath it all, just a girl who didn’t want to make anyone mad.”

• “Beating ourselves up results in pain, obviously, so at the same time that we’re beating ourselves up, we’re looking for ways to manage that pain, to make it bearable.”

• “Whichever metaphor you prefer, self-compassion isn’t always a comfortable or peaceful experience, but it does help us grow mightier.”

• “lot of us have a quiet little voice worrying that we’ll get up in that corporate office and have no idea what we’re actually doing. As a person with a hobby, you’re not ready for all of that now, and it’s difficult to imagine what it will feel like and how ready you could be after you go through the process of growing. The difficulty of imagining ourselves with the knowledge, expertise, and strengths we will gain in the future can stop us entirely from moving toward that future.”

• “It’s really strange when we’re doing our best, and our best falls short of what the world expects from us. When we can turn toward that strangeness with observational distance, then we are best enabled to be the change we want to see in the world.”

• “Being grateful for good things doesn’t erase the difficult things”

• “The cure for burnout is not “self-care”; it is all of us caring for one another. So we’ll say it one more time: Trust your body. Be kind to yourself. You are enough, just as you are right now. Your joy matters. Please tell everyone you know.”

• “Humans are not built to do big things alone; we are built to do them together.”

• “even if I felt like a social pariah in my classes, at least I would have a better vocabulary than these philistines”

• “I realized that there was some prestige in being smart, or at least appearing smart. Sounding smart was not the same social Teflon as being good-looking or athletic or funny, but hell, if someone could give me some props for being good at school, I would take nerd props over no props at all.”

• “They belonged in a way that I never could, and their regard for me was sweet and sour. How Asian.”

• “But in the course of reading great books, something happened. My reading molded me, the tool hammering its hand into shape. By some miracle—and by miracle, I mean great teachers—I pushed past the shallowness and stupidity of my own motivations. I fell in love with the actual literature and the actual ideas of great literature.”

• “The medium has no depth, but the content does.”

• “If you catch me in my off-guard moments, I’ll tell you that at some points in my life, I wanted to be white. It’s not a proud feeling, but it’s not a feeling that comes from the shame of being brown. It’s a tired feeling. Tired of the crushing racism. Tired of not belonging. It’s the exhaustion from fighting for your right to exist.”

• “Faith. Knowledge. Doubt. They weaved in and out of our lives with a baroque intricacy, a background fugue to our stumblings on the stage.”

• “What do you have control over? And what is beyond your control? As Camus’s protagonist, Dr. Rieux offers an answer: when the world is coming apart, you do your job.”

• “That was the delusion. We weren’t like everybody else. I now had the menace of knowing, and it infected everything I did. I was reminded of it constantly in ways large and small: my parents’ wobbly accents as my English became arrow-straight, the long and confusing searches in the grocery stores for simple items, the stares from strangers at the mall. These reminders that my family was not a normal American family—that we didn’t look like the rest of our town, that we were from somewhere else—wove into my very fabric a need to belong, a need that was a glittering and slippery yarn. I would never be able to untangle it from who I was and who I wanted to be, and it seemed that if I tugged on this thread, everything would unravel and leave me exposed.”

• “Bà Ngoại’s ire wasn’t the anger of personal damages but the anger of being shamed, a singular dishonor that she and my parents bore heavily. If our elders felt that we kids had done something to embarrass them or to cause them to lose face, our punishment was administered as if the entire town were watching and judging them as parents. Puritanical in its purity and unflinching in its deliverance. The severity of our punishment was commensurate to their own perception of their parenting.”

• “Bà Ngoại, my grandmother. Gentle one moment, violent in the next. Violence was sometimes kindness. Sometimes it was love. Sometimes it was rage. But it was everywhere, always.”

• “But if I allowed myself to be harmed by words, I was showing them that I belonged at least by virtue of understanding their language. And all I wanted was to belong.”

• “Kids covet things. They see something that other kids have, and they want that thing. They see a cool T-shirt with Darth Vader on it, and they want that shirt, too. Soon they want the house, the hair, the skin color.”

• “As an adult, I can explain and even understand where his anger came from (PTSD as a refugee, his own abuse as a child, the cycle of abuse that can perpetuate itself in a culture that equated obedient children with great parenting). As a second grader, I knew this violence as my only reality. If I spilled something, disobeyed, did something too quickly or too slowly.”

• “The wish for different parents fuels the archetypal fairy tales about evil stepmothers and children left in the woods. These fairy tales pivot around the wish that our parents, irascible and imperfect, aren’t even our real parents, that a fairy godmother will reveal to us our true royal bloodline or magical lineage. Whether you’re Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or Cinderella, the fantasy is that the adults who are raising you aren’t even your real parents, that your real parents are kinder and magical.”

• “My past was worse than my present, and if my present indicated my future, I could live with that.”

• “As an adult, I’ve been able to understand that my father was not as trapped by his past as I thought he was. He was often violent and angry, but now I can look back and see that he tried to do fun things from time to time, things that didn’t fit into the narrow, cartoonish image that I formed of him.”

• “But even if the past is unchangeable, maybe our perspective of the past can change. And maybe the way we see past events can change, and if that can change, maybe the past event itself does change—not in action or outcome but in purpose and intent.”

• “How could I explain to Lou that we were symbols? That some people would never be able to see us as just people? That we were symbols of a painful and confusing war? Symbols of the refugees they saw on TV? Symbols of what they were afraid of? Symbols of the people who had shot at them and killed their friends, brothers, and sons? Symbols of whatever they wanted to see?”

• “I did learn a lesson that night. In the void of their departure, I learned to appear greater than I was. My brother needed me to be more than his nine-year-old brother. I learned that even if I didn’t have a clue about driving or having a job or being a parent, the symbolism of being a parent—the basic act of making toast and washing plates—was enough for Lou. That was the power of the symbol.”

• “Kids don’t have a euphemistic or subtle way of speaking about life.”

• “Symbolism in our waking Jungian dream was a two-way mirror. We were symbols for our American neighbors, but our neighbors—with their polished cars, grand homes, backyard swing sets—they symbolized something for us, too. They glittered as goals, mirages toward which we endlessly stumbled.”

• “Did I think that I could upend their expectations without any resistance? Of course, I was technically the same kid, but I had gotten the message: I couldn’t try too hard to change or fit in, especially if it involved something as dramatic as changing my name. That was too much. Too symbolic. Too real.”

• “Jung says that the process of becoming an individual begins with a wounding of the ego, and mine was undeniably wounded.”

• “But if literature moves you deeply, does it matter where it comes from? Does it matter that it’s trashy or lowbrow? Isn’t that emotional connection one of the purposes of art? To make you feel—really feel—emotions? To resonate with your life? And perhaps, in that connection, to introduce you to a world that lies beyond your own perspective, the utopia beyond your myopia?”

• “Emma Bovary’s books made her yearn for a dreamworld of emotional dramas and searing affairs. They seeded a delusion in her that grew quickly and blinded her, choking out the light except for the glow of fictitious hope. She was not ready for the quiet boredom of a married woman’s life, and the yearning that flourished inside her made her own life repulsive to her. Could art do that? Could it make you long and loathe at the same time?”

• “It would be decades before I diagnosed the lump of alienation, dual consciousness, and self-hatred, but it was already growing quickly, bilious and caustic. I only saw myself as the piece that did not fit in the puzzle.”

• “Our imaginations, our self-reflection, were circumscribed by what we saw, limited and funneled into someone else’s view of who we were. We saw ourselves as others saw us, and when we were in the media (which was not frequent), our stereotypes were reinforced in the books we read, the movies we saw, the things our friends said to us.”

• “With my mother, I lacked the words to tell her what I needed. With my father, I lacked the trust to tell him, the trust that he wouldn’t respond with violence or disappointment, the trust that he could give me heartfelt advice, that he could see the olive branch I was extending to him if I shared an intimate and personal experience with him. I didn’t believe that he would be anyone different from who he had been (no matter how much I wanted or needed him to be different).”

• “In Vietnamese, the word for country and the word for water are the same: nước. Context obviously makes it clear if you’re talking about the former or the latter, but in Vietnamese, your country is not the terra firma or the nationality; it’s the water. The waters that feed the soil. The waters that lap your shores. If you ask someone where they’re from, you’re asking them literally from what waters do they come.”

• “Old water. New water. Old country. New country. Aqua vitae. Giver of life. Destroyer of memories.”

• “My perceived need to read changed, slowly and surprisingly, into a desire to read—a desire that I didn’t fight.”

• “Their kindness was confusing for me, and it was easier for me to play the simple role of a teenager being angry with his parents. It was easier for me to fixate on the cool new stereo and not to think about why I got a cool new stereo from my parents. In the midst of my own changes, I wasn’t able to change my perspective on my mom and dad, to consider that my parents might be changing. Maybe they wanted to change the story of parents being the antagonists in their children’s lives. We didn’t have the script for that scene. I missed the cues for the dialogue, and the curtain closed on another moment of disconnection.”

• “Hatred required calories that I didn’t have.”

• “Punk rock had paved a way for me through my first two years of high school, but I was beginning to realize that maybe anarchy and nihilism were not a blueprint for building a future. Punk rock was an explosive for detonating the present so that I could rebuild my future from the rubble.”

• “It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.”

• “This was the real lesson I learned from Malcolm X, the one I had been avoiding, and like Malcolm, I had to evolve my own thinking. But for me, that meant confronting a hideous truth about who the racists were. This was the hardest thing he had written about. It would be a long time before I could begin to understand how big racism was and how it affected me, but I had to take the first step, to acknowledge the reality of life, to tackle the hardest truth if I wanted to fight it. We all were the racists.”

• “In retrospect, I realized how my parents draped the hopes of college and greatness upon me, their eldest born. They snuffed out their own ambitions, exchanging their dreams for their children’s, hoping that our lives would be full of possibilities and free from devastation. My vague but lustrous potential would be built upon the heavy shards of their broken futures.”

• “My aspirations for greatness were the antithesis of punk, and I knew it. And for the first time I realized that the most punk thing for me to do was to be who I was without pretention or preamble or grandiose posturing. I had read it in Nietzsche but didn’t know what it really meant: become who you are. But becoming who you are required throwing away who you thought you were, unloading expectations both internal and external.”

• “I just never understood the logic behind buying souvenirs. After all, it’s the memory we want, not the souvenir, and once the memory goes, what meaning does the souvenir have? That’s like keeping training wheels on your bicycle. I think most of us spend far too much time looking back at our past anyway and not worrying enough about the future without an attic full of old prom dresses, dried corsages, books, toys you don’t play with anymore and photo albums of pictures we had thought were long gone.”

• “I don’t need souvenirs, and I don’t want souvenirs. None of you need souvenirs either. As long as you laugh, won’t you carry all the good times with you? And as long as you cry, won’t you carry all the bad times with you? So wherever we all end up and wherever we are all going, I know we don’t need souvenirs because laughter will always be laughter, and tears will always be tears.”

• “Oh, I don’t know about that. It was okay. I messed it up a little from my nerves, I guess. I feel … I feel weirdly let down. So much hype around everything, you know?” I reflexively shrugged at Molly’s compliment, deflecting praise as I always did because I was so unaccustomed to hearing earnest accolades. Any kind remark made me feel vulnerable, forced me to confront myself and my purported excellence, a task that felt impossible and undeserved.”

• “Teenagers and truck drivers: We’re all on our way to somewhere else. We’re all sitting at these booths, knowing that we’re not at our final destination. This is not the last stop for any of us. We’re all en route to far-off places, but our arrival? Who knows? Our arrival will be dictated by things we both can and can’t control, unforeseen things. I’m going to college to study English and art, but who knows if that’ll happen? Conor’s joined the army, but what if he gets killed in Iraq? What about you or my brother? What’s next? And we might get to our destination directly, but maybe it’ll be in a roundabout, crazy way.”

• “In a world that often seems too crowded or busy to notice beautiful things or make meaningful connections, there is still room for each of us to grow in the ways we were meant to.”

• “Whenever you meditate, bear in mind the phrase “without distraction and without grasping,” and put this into practice.”

• “If you fill a gourd with just a little water and shake it, it makes a lot of noise. But if you fill it to the brim and shake it, it makes no sound.”

• “Let your mind be a gracious host in the midst of unruly guests.”

• “Like Einstein’s theory that physical space is warped by bodies of matter within it, it sometimes feels as if the space of awareness is warped by the contents of the mind.”

• “At times, when we become fixated on something, our minds seem to become very small. Trivial issues loom up in our awareness as if they were very large and important. In reality, they haven’t become large. Our minds have become small. The experienced magnitude of the contents of the mind is relative to the spaciousness of the mind.”

• “Let the space of your mind be emotionally neutral, like physical space, which could not care less whether bullets or hummingbirds streak through it.”

• “What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

• “As an analogy, consider a researcher who measured only the vibrations created by the musical instruments as an orchestra played Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. He would find that before anyone heard any music, the instruments vibrated in specific ways, so he might very well conclude that those vibrations are the sole cause of the symphony. What he will have left out is the role of the composer, the conductor, the skills and emotional states of the musicians, the audience, and so on. While he’s right that the vibrations of the instruments played a critical role in producing the music, his eliminative approach has blinded him to a myriad of other influences, and he will be oblivious of the fact that many people can compose and play tunes in their minds, with no vibrating musical instruments exerting any causal role.”

• “All phenomena are preceded by the mind. When the mind is comprehended, all phenomena are comprehended. By bringing the mind under control, all things are brought under control.”

• “‘The mind that is established in equipoise comes to know reality as it is.‘”

• “One of the ways of stopping science would be only to do experiments in the region where you know the law. But experimenters search most diligently, and with the greatest effort, in exactly those places where it seems most likely that we can prove our theories wrong. In other words, we are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”

• “a person whose mind is distracted lives between the fangs of mental afflictions.”

• “The success of the McDonald’s model suggests that many people have come to prefer a world in which there are few surprises.”

• “‘If you want to be happy, you mustn’t fear the following truths but confront them head-on: one, that we are always unhappy, and that our sadness, suffering and fear have good reasons for existing. Two, that there is no real way to separate these feelings completely from ourselves.‘”

• “I’ve always thought that art is about moving hearts and minds. Art has given me faith: faith that today may not have been perfect but was still a pretty good day, or faith that even after a long day of being depressed, I can still burst into laughter over something very small.”

• “I’ve also realised that revealing my darkness is just as natural a thing to do as revealing my light.”

• “I was very serious about friendships when I was little, like most children. But after being bullied in elementary school and middle school, I think by the time I reached high school I’d developed a fear of straying from the herd, and was nervous about friendships in general. That fear was reflected in my romantic relationships, and I decided not to expect too much from friends or friendships anymore. Psychiatrist: I see. Do you find your”

• “Perhaps you’re co-dependent on your work as well. When you get good results, your worth is realised and you relax, but that satisfaction doesn’t last long – that’s the problem. It’s like you’re running inside a hamster wheel.”

• “Sometimes the best thing to do with people who would never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether.”

• “If it doesn’t make you feel good, don’t go out of your way to do it.”

• “I’d like you not to give too much credit to what people say about you. The moment you set out to be more empathic is the moment it becomes a chore. That would result in your empathy decreasing, if anything. It’s good not to fake interest in things you’re not interested in.”

• “Because there’s really no end to worrying once you set your mind to it. If you shift your perspective from their past to your present, you can start perceiving your personal experiences in a more positive manner. From ‘How sad they didn’t realise this’ to ‘How lucky it is that I realise this.‘”

• “It’s like with your guilt. You want to strangle someone, and then you automatically feel guilty about having had that thought. Your own anger turns you into a guilty person. There’s a desire to punish yourself, shall we say. You have this superego that exerts control over you, a superego built not only from your own experiences but cobbled together from all sorts of things that you admire, creating an idealised version of yourself. But that idealised version of yourself is, in the end, only an ideal. It’s not who you actually are. You keep failing to meet that ideal in the real world, and then you punish yourself. If you have a strict superego, the act of being punished eventually becomes gratifying. For example, if you’re suspicious of the love you’re receiving, and so act out until your partner lashes out and leaves you, you feel relief. You eventually become controlled more by imaginary outside forces than anything that is actually you.”

• “when your life satisfaction falls, it’s natural to retreat into primitive measures. And eating and sleeping happen to be our most instinctive base measures.”

• “I’m needlessly harsh towards myself, so I need comforting, someone who is on my side.”

• “I’m very good at immersing myself emotionally, and I’m very empathic; I also feel pressured to be empathic, which means whenever someone would share an experience with me, I’d find myself lying and saying I’d been through the same thing. I would lie to make others laugh or to get attention, while simultaneously chastising myself for lying.”

• “We often lie when our cognitive abilities become impaired for whatever reason. Like when we’re drunk, for instance. You know how our memory or judgement falters after a few drinks, right? We subconsciously start lying to fill in the blanks. How many times have you seen drunk people insist they’re not drunk? We also find ourselves announcing things that have nothing to do with the context.”

• “Psychiatrist: Why are you so aware of all the hardships others are going through? Me: (Realisation hits.) You’re right. Wouldn’t it be more natural for me not to know? Psychiatrist: So, complain. Let others know how hard things are for you. Me: I wouldn’t know what to say. Psychiatrist: Observe how other people are saying it. They’re saying they’re having a hard time – that’s how you know, so clearly, that they are. But I think you’re the kind of person who would ask someone who wasn’t having a hard time if they were having a hard time. Me: (I burst into tears at this point.) You mean I was just pretending to be kind all this time? Psychiatrist: You are kind. There’s nothing you can do about that. Me: But I don’t think it’s kindness, I think it’s just … being pathetic. Psychiatrist: You’re attempting to silence your own complaints by thinking, At least I’m better off than them. And the world is full of so much suffering that it’s the easiest thing to find people who are having a harder time than you are. But once you do, you then insist on taking the extra step of berating yourself: How could I have been so blind to that person’s hardships until now?”

• “Psychiatrist: I feel like you’re not very interested in yourself. Me: Even when I keep a diary of my feelings? Psychiatrist: Is that not more of a record of yourself in the third person?”

• “When you’re having a hard time, it’s natural to feel like you’re having the hardest time in the world. And it’s not selfish to feel that way. Just because certain conditions in your life are relatively better, it doesn’t mean you’re better off in general”

• “It’s not the pills that make people addicted to them.”

• “It’s just your opinion. It’s not like there’s any right or wrong to it. Of course, others may have their own expectations, or you may feel pressured to sound impressive in your critiques because of your studies and your job. But the moment you think to yourself, Well, this is the way I am, and what can you do about it, you’ll feel much freer. Me: Oh. Just the thought of”

• “Forgetfulness can be liberating, you know.”

• “You put a lot of stock in what other people think. It’s because your satisfaction with yourself is so low. But your life is your life, your body is your body – and you have responsibility over it. Right now, you don’t process the input that comes to you through a mechanism of rationality or mediation, you go straight to the extreme. Self-surveillance isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there is so much you can do with the input, such as rationalising or finding a different way to think about things – but you only do one thing with it. There can be so many reasons for something, but you’re so focused on the result of it that you don’t see the reasons. You keep focusing on, I’m sad, I want to cry, I’m angry, which only amplifies these emotions.”

• “I think you need to spatially separate your work and your rest. If you were stressed at work, you ought to be relaxing when you’re home,”

• “Your mood is extremely important. It determines how you interpret the random events of life.”

• “It’s just a hobby after all. You mustn’t let your hobby become stressful. But I hope if you don’t do it isn’t out of fear.”

• “Usually before a dream becomes reality, we tend to think we’ll wish for nothing else if only the dream is realised. Imagine how you’d feel if you always remembered that your dream has already been fulfilled. Everything that comes after would be like a lovely bonus. When you feel envious of something, try to imagine how you would look to your twenty-year-old self.”

• “But the you of the present is looking at your life and past as if you’re a failure. When in truth, from the perspective of a younger you, you’re the very picture of success.”

• “when my face looked like a bleak black-and-white film still in the mirror – could that girl have imagined she would become me one day?”

• “I’ve worked hard to get here. And now I make a living doing what I enjoy. I’ve no anxieties about whether this is the right path for me. All I want is to get better at it. That’s enough for me – why did I torture myself by comparing myself to someone else? If twenty-year-old me met me today, she would cry with joy. And that’s enough for me.”

• “more you sacrifice, the more you’ll begin to expect a payback.”

• “You keep obsessively holding yourself to these idealised standards, forcing yourself to fit them. It’s another way, among many, for you to keep punishing yourself.”

• “You try to hide your obsession because you are aware of it, I mean.”

• “Your self-esteem determines how you feel about the sincerity of others.”

• “You have sympathy for social minorities. Perhaps that comes from seeing yourself as disadvantaged?”

• “We are so bad at mourning in our society. Maybe it’s a failure of respect.”

• “I think it’s good to experience complete solitude in an unfamiliar environment. You’re not hitting rock bottom right now. When we’re sinking in water, it can be a relief to feel the ground beneath our feet, the rock bottom, because we know we can kick against it to rise again. But if you can’t feel the ground in life, the fear can be overwhelming. So maybe it’s good to find your rock bottom.”

• “Mother clearly hated how she had passed on this part of herself to us, which was why she was always angry at our faults.”

• “Accepting your burdens and putting them down isn’t an occasional posture; it’s something you need to practise for the rest of your life.”

• “Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed.”

• “We always put modifiers in front of ourselves, and I’m no exception to that.”

• “to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.”

• “When life becomes something one just lives through, when the demands of survival take up all of our time and effort, leaving no strength for any other demands, and when time rushes by drying up or rotting whatever we have had to neglect, expecting someone to carry on being the same is truly too much of a burden.”

• “There are days when I wish I were numb, when I’m desperate to feel nothing. I want to be simple and cold and totally without feeling. Empathy has a large presence in my life, and it can cast a very long shadow. I can be watching a television drama or a movie, listening to a song or looking at a photograph, listening to someone’s story or writing my own, and my heart and mood will sink. Like a punctum they pierce me without context, a feeling I am very used to now and tired of.”

• “Life is as messy as a bag whose owner never cleans it out. You have no idea when you might reach in and pull out a piece of old trash, and you’re afraid someone is going to look through your bag someday. Maybe your ‘baggage’ is like an old bag, too. You toss it around any which way, not caring how worn it gets or where it lands, and no one notices. You can’t afford a new bag so you carefully and painstakingly hold it so the rough patches don’t show.”

• “Changing your mindset takes some work, but the beauty is when you begin to understand there’s a huge difference between being busy and being productive. This is something so many of us struggle with because we falsely believe that we need to be busy, that we are supposed to fill our days.”

• “Balance is just one of the stories we tell ourselves. We all have a library of folklore filled with stories about ourselves that we believe: we are supposed to be a certain way, have a certain job, or live a certain life.”

• “I quieted the stories in my head and reset my expectations to make them realistic for my life. I’m not going to say I’ve completely gotten rid of the guilt, but I feel so much better because I changed my way of thinking.”

• “Ask any kindergartner what they are good at, and you’ll need to sit through a laundry list of topics: art, running, painting, climbing trees, eating potato chips—seriously, five-year-olds think they are amazing at everything! But wait ten years and ask the very same child, and she’ll think of almost nothing; at best you’ll maybe hear one or two things she believes she excels in. What happens to us in this space of time? How do we lose our belief in ourselves? We’ve allowed the world to define us and reinforce these limiting beliefs, but it’s time to break through.”

• “Sometimes we have to let go of our old stories.”

• “Because so many of us live in a state of either/or, we tend to push aside other things we really want to do. Far too many of us have pushed aside our aspirations because we believe we don’t have time or don’t have the right to pursue them.”

• “Too often we hand over the reins, allowing others to imprison us with their own agendas and urgent fires that need putting out. We think we don’t have control over how our day runs, but we do. We’ve simply forgotten that we have the ability to choose to spend time on our own priorities.”

• “Have you ever experienced that feeling of having no control over your day? As if your world is so rigid and made up of so many rules you don’t really get to choose the life you live? That, my friend, is learned helplessness.”

• “It’s not reality2 that makes us feel stuck; it’s the lens we use to view the world.”

• “We want to believe our kids need us, and sometimes in the busy rush of our everyday life, we forget they are capable of being more independent.”

• “We all have these invisible choices, don’t we?”

• “Have you ever watched a squirrel aiming to get something she wants? Perched in a tree, tail twitching, she sees a bird feeder and is drawn to it. The homeowners, though, are smart, and they’ve added all kinds of obstacles to make it “squirrel-proof.” Does our squirrel take a look, decide she has no chance of getting to the seeds, and toss in the towel? Absolutely not. A squirrel will attack the problem from all angles, testing and pushing the boundaries of what she knows she can and cannot do, until she sits triumphantly atop that feeder with a belly full of birdseed.”

• “Finding choices isn’t only possible, it’s essential to thrive. You just have to start actively looking for them—that’s a choice in and of itself.”

• “It’s possible for your future to look brighter, for you to focus on the things that are important to you. But to do that, your priorities have to take priority. It’s possible to have a job that makes you happy and to spend time on the things you really want.”

• “Our North Star is a combination of our mission, vision statement, and core values. Each one answers the question of who you are at your heart. The mission statement tells us what we are doing now, the vision statement tells of where we want to be, and the core values tell us how these can be defined through our actions. Like pieces of a puzzle, they come together to create the completed picture of why we make the choices we do. They become the North Star we need to guide us and help us navigate through decisions.”

• “Human beings are works in progress2 that mistakenly think they are finished. The person you are right now is transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.”

• “Your mission statement isn’t about your job itself—it’s about what your job does and why you do it.”

• “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon15 is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” We don’t have to wait until we receive bad news from the doctor or read our obituary in the paper. We can begin to make those big choices now, using our North Star to help guide us.”

• “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

• “For too long, I had no idea where to spend my time or how to spend my energy. I wasn’t productive—I was simply running around being busy, filling my days but not my soul.”

• “It seems like this abundance of information should make life easier, but when we are bombarded with so much of it, the paradox is that decision making becomes more difficult. This is when the feeling of overwhelm begins to settle in and we simply don’t know where to start.”

• “We have to cut in order to really grow and flourish. I know this seems counterintuitive, but think of a garden: Do you plant the flowers one on top of another? Do you squeeze so many in that there is no room? Or do you allow each plant to have space—space to receive the rain and the sun, space to spread their leaves and grow? That’s what we need: space to allow ourselves to focus. The only way to have that space is to actively create it for ourselves. We need boundaries.”

• “Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat.”

• “Remember, efficiency is doing a lot of work; effectiveness is doing the important work. Quality wins every time. And yes, we want to use less energy and time, but not at the expense of quality. Sometimes we are so caught up in deadlines, we don’t realize that the processes we believe make us faster are working against us.”

• “Writing on paper deepens the relationship between the information and your brain, and it creates the ability for you to see your bread crumbs to help uncover patterns. It allows you to see the bigger picture, which can sometimes feel abstract—it helps you uncover what’s important, which is where you really want to spend your time.”

• “No matter which bowl I choose, I will end up eating the amount of ice cream that fills it. My idea of how much ice cream I need expands to the size of the bowl I have. Time works in exactly the same way.”

• “We don’t realize that without failure we wouldn’t be as successful as we are. Our shortcomings and mistakes are all part of our path.”

• “Instead of saying, “I don’t have time,” try saying, “It’s not a priority,” and see how that feels.”

• “Overwhelm isn’t having too much to do; it’s not knowing where to start. Our long checklist doesn’t show us where to start. Instead, it confuses us more, spinning us in circles as we feverishly scan our tasks, wondering how we will possibly get it all done. Yes, it makes us feel busy, but it doesn’t make us productive”

• “You see, dopamine doesn’t distinguish between important and unimportant; it just knows that crossing items off our lists feels good.”

• “if you prioritize the important tasks, you get to a place where you don’t have any urgent tasks.”

• “Oftentimes we feel that something is important because we believe it’s something we are supposed to do—even if it’s not something we really want. These tasks are so deeply entwined with our stories and our need for perfection that we don’t even realize it. We feel tied to the obligation, and we lose sight of why we are even doing the task in the first place.”

• “Are we allowing our stories to dictate our days?”

• “A good plan includes the three Rs—record, reward, and redirect.”

• “You see, traditions are systems—they take the thinking out of tasks. Routines and rituals do that for us, too, but on a daily basis—they help streamline our days and make it easier for us to enjoy each day.”

• “Decision fatigue loves laundry stress; they’re best friends.”

• “How did the river go from intimidating to entertaining? All it took was structuring our run. We took some time to create a plan, and suddenly the crushing power of the river didn’t seem so out of control. We owned the river that day, and it felt good.”

• “One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is planning out the entire week in one sitting,”

• “It’s amazing the deep connections we can make when we strip away everything else.”

• “As long as you can start9, you are all right.”

• “important to count the marbles in our jars.”

• “The world will see you the way you see you, and treat you the way you treat yourself.”

• “We’ve all experienced that vague sense of dissatisfaction with our day. Time passes in a blur as we sit at our desks without really paying attention to the tasks or even the people around us. We punch the clock, getting work done, but when the day closes we feel like we accomplished nothing. This is why we feel unsatisfied when we lay our heads on our pillows, why we wonder where the day has gone.”

• “Harmony can be found in the 168 hours we have each week, but so many people choose to focus—almost hawklike—on just the 24 hours of each day. Twenty-four hours is such a tiny snapshot of the whole picture, literally one-seventh of our week. And yet each day is treated as if it stands alone, so there’s a tendency to look at this tiny snapshot as our chance at achieving this mythical balance.”

• “Any given 24 hours might not be balanced, but the 168-hour week as a whole can be.”

• “We have a tendency to beat ourselves up and to notice only the things we didn’t do well, when in reality we are doing much better than we think.”

• “It’s all about effectiveness over efficiency.”

• “Sharks glide through the salty water at the top of the food chain, but they are burdened with the constant task of movement. For sharks to breathe, oxygen-rich water must continually flow over their gills. Their fins act like the wings of a fighter jet, giving them lift. If a shark stops moving, it will sink to the sandy bottom of the ocean floor and suffocate. Sharks are predators in constant motion, which has led scientists for years to wonder, If sharks can never stop moving, how do they sleep?”

• “We have the time, but the idea of intentionally creating space for this unstructured time feels uncomfortable. It feels silly because we are grown-ups and we don’t think we need recess. But we do. Whitespace is essential for our own well-being.”

• “the beauty of acknowledging our stories is that we have the ability to rewrite our own endings.”

• “We are taught by society—by our upbringing—to be givers. We give, we give, we give, and we feel guilty taking.”

• “To bring out the best in others7, I first have to bring out the best in me. I cannot give what I do not have.”

• “We have a thousand words for busy13 but no single word for the true opposite—at least not a positive one. There isn’t an English word for slowing down and savoring time.”

• “We all want to be acknowledged. We falsely believe we have to be everywhere in order to be seen. I think we all worry about being forgotten. We all want to make our mark on this world.”

• “Committing to nothing means you’re distracted by everything.”

• “Sometimes yes is the very best word.”

• “every time we say yes, we say no to something else.”

• “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”

• “Our brain can overlook countless items in our surroundings, but once our brain takes notice of something it considers significant (in my case, pregnant women), it starts to pull those occurrences out of the background noise. Because of our selective attention,1 it feels as if they are appearing again and again in our world. Really, the truth is, those things were there all along; we just didn’t take notice. It’s our mindset kicking in.”

• “While I love the crystal-clear waters of the beaches, it does limit me from seeing the mountains and rivers.”

• “If I spent all my time in the mountains,3 I would miss diving with sea turtles, but if I only swam the warm waters of the Caribbean, I’d never get to see the sun set on the mountains.”

• “The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it. -VANNEVAR BUSH”

• “Very few tools transform their culture.”

• “Humans often anthropomorphize the objects they use, especially when they become fond of their interaction with those objects.”

• “As with most media from which things are built, whether the thing is a cathedral, a bacterium, a sonnet, a fugue or a word processor, architecture dominates material. To understand clay is not to understand the pot. What a pot is all about can be appreciated better by understanding the creators and users of the pot and their need both to inform the material with their meaning and to extract meaning from the form.”

• “You’re doing this because that’s the dream,” he said. “Don’t mess with my dream, and I’ll like you.”

• “You know, we don’t grow most of the food we eat. We wear clothes other people make. We speak a language that other people developed. We use a mathematics that other people evolved I mean, we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful, ecstatic feeling to create something that puts it back in the pool of human experience and knowledge.”

• “Crusades are not completed in a day, even in a year.”

• “improve its abilities to wrestle problems into submission. Something to augment human powers. That was the word he used, augment. The other word he would come to use was crusade. Engelbart was embarking on a crusade to augment human capabilities by applying new technologies and developing ways to interact with that technology. He ultimately would realize, and even surpass, what Vannevar Bush had written in his terribly important yet unappreciated essay in the Atlantic. Crusades are not completed in a day, even in a year.”

• “The territory you see through the augmented window in your new vehicle is not the normal landscape of plains and trees and oceans, but an informationscape in which the features are words, numbers, graphs, images, concepts, paragraphs, arguments, relationships, formulas, diagrams, proofs, bodies of literature and schools of criticism.” We now have a term for this informationscape: cyberspace.”

• “The tablet become a page become a screen become a world, a virtual world. Its depths increase with every image and word or number, with every addition, every contribution, of fact or thought. Its corridors form wherever electricity runs with intelligence. Its chambers bloom wherever data gathers and is stored . ”

• “His vision was at the mercy of those he inspired.”

• “intimately. He found himself reading Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding”

• “The medium is the message.”

• “The computer is a medium! I had always thought of it as a tool, perhaps a vehicle-a much weaker conception. What McLuhan was saying is that if the personal computer is truly a new medium then the very use of it would actually change the thought patterns of an entire civilization.”

• “The Alan Kay style of virtual designing, which he continued long after visualizing the Dynabook, consists of creating imaginative abstractions of what can be, going through the motions of gathering a team to build the thing, and discovering important new techniques and innovations in the process. The real product is the body of ideas that circulate from the vision.”

• “Metaphor, it turns out, is the key to making computers comprehensible.”

• “if it didn’t hit the streets, it wasn’t worth doing. Ideas were useless if they didn’t get out there.”

• “people are more important than computers, and that computer systems should be designed to alleviate human frailties, rather than have the human succumb to the needs of the machine”

• “How can you believe any criticism when everything you do turns to”

• “How can you believe any criticism when everything you do turns to gold?”

• “The proper lesson from all this was that personal computer companies are just as well off letting others produce great software.”

• “when you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, with simple solutions, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. Your solutions are way over-simplified. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it’s really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop, and the solutions tend to work for a while. But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem. And come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.”

• “A lot of times people don’t do great things because great things really aren’t expected of them and because nobody really demands they try and nobody says, ‘Hey, that’s the culture here, to do great things”

• “What did I learn from Steve Jobs?” he repeated. “That ignorance [of what you can’t do] is great. We learned to keep on trying and trying. We weren’t the best, but we tried the hardest. We were just a bunch oflucky nerds.”

• “Real artists ship.”

• “When you’re trying to spread a religion you have to be pretty strict at first. After you get them converted, you can relax,”

• “Those in charge of the marketplace regarded computing as a rite of passage, a sort of hazing. Only by acquiring knowledge in this needlessly arcane system could one gain admittance to the society of adepts. It was not a joyous society, but one of stiffupper-lips.”

• “What I didn’t understand was that most people didn’t get to make their own decisions.”

• “Breakthroughs like PageMaker have two sorts of effects. The first is to increase the ease and reduce the cost of performing previously expensive, time-consuming tasks. The second, and possibly more significant, is to empower people who otherwise could never afford to do the task in the first place.”

• “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

• “What’s the difference between Apple and Boy Scouts? The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.”

• “There was a time, I know, when I conducted much of the same sorts of business that I currently engage in, without requiring a machine that makes more calculations in a morning’s work than all the combined arithmetical operations of humanity performed by hand, over the span of recorded history.”

• “Still, I am hard pressed for proof that, for all its magic, Macintosh has enabled me to be more productive. I feel that it has, with every inch of my being. But after my recent fiasco with On Location and Word, I sometimes question whether this is an illusion.”

• “This gap between accepted reality (computers make us more productive) and the quantifiable result (they don’t), has come to be known as the Productivity Paradox. A true puzzler: If computers enable us to get so much work done, in a much shorter period of time why can’t we measure it? Where did the productivity go?”

• “But maybe productivity is not the main benefit from computers. As its designers understood, the point of Macintosh was not to prod you into piling up x more reams of paper, but to change the way you interact with information, to empower you to manipulate information with confidence, to augment your creative powers, and to change the very way you think.”

• “Something happens to companies when they get to be a few billion dollars,” he said. “They sort of turn into vanilla companies. They add a lot of layers of management. They get really into process rather than result, rather than products. They lose touch with their customers. Their soul goes away.”

• “Macintosh tells people as they use it, ‘You don’t have to take things too seriously.‘”

• “Each new purchase brought its small dopamine rush that faded as soon as the thing was out of its box and taking up space.”

• “Minimalism was a brand to identify with as much as a way of coping with mess.”

• “Every advertisement for a new product implied that you should dislike what you already had.”

• “There was really nothing wrong with our lives at all.”

• “Minimalism also seemed sometimes to be a form of individualism, an excuse to put yourself first by thinking, I shouldn’t have to deal with this person, place, or thing because it doesn’t fit within my worldview.”

• “It makes sense that millennials embrace minimalism. My generation has never had a healthy relationship with material stability. There are always too few resources at hand or too much competition for what’s left, a scenario that’s engulfing not just one age group but a wider swath of people every year. Even as the traditional economy falls apart, we’re awash in social media noise and new platforms competing for our attention, labor, and cash. Stability is no longer the default.”

• “Maybe the longing for less is the constant shadow of humanity’s self-doubt: What if we were better off without everything we’ve gained in modern society? If the trappings of civilization leave us so dissatisfied, then maybe their absence is preferable, and we should”

• “Maybe the longing for less is the constant shadow of humanity’s self-doubt: What if we were better off without everything we’ve gained in modern society? If the trappings of civilization leave us so dissatisfied, then maybe their absence is preferable, and we should abandon them in order to seek some deeper truth.”

• “We should not believe the lack of silver and gold to be proof of the simple life.”

• “Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad.”

• “Minimalism is thus a kind of last resort. When we can’t control our material security or life path, the only possibility left is to lower our expectations to the point where they’re easier to achieve, which could mean living in a train car, or a camper van.”

• “We like to think that we can do without, rough it to prove that we’re not so soft or bound to the past.”

• “If we don’t establish our identities with the volume of things we consume, then we feel more attuned to the way we consume them and the careful decisions we make between one thing and another. It’s a species of the narcissism of small differences. We take pride in the small details that we have actually chosen from our limited options, which might make us feel better about not being able to change our circumstances as a whole.”

• “Consumerism causes a kind of alienation, in the Marxist sense: When workers are separated from the products of their labor and compensated by an hourly wage, they can’t find satisfaction in their jobs or the remainder of family life. Thus they turn to acquiring capital as the only form of self-fulfillment. We work only to accumulate stuff and in turn the accumulated stuff dominates us, further distancing us from non-commodified things like relationships, joy, and community. Labor “is therefore not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying needs external to it,” Karl Marx wrote in 1844.”

• “Minimalism is a perfect fit because it allows for just enough character to make a space interesting but not too much. The rest gets smoothed over into blankness.”

• “When a word or style spreads everywhere, it tends to lose its original meaning.”

• “The veneer of minimalist style becomes like an organic food label, expensive green juices, or complex skin treatments being sold as a “no-makeup” look. It’s another class-dependent way of feeling better about yourself by buying a product, as Spartan as the product might be. It takes a lot of money to look this simple.”

• “It was better to go without a couch than buy one that wasn’t perfect. That commitment to taste might be rarified, but it probably didn’t endear Jobs to his family, who might have preferred a place to sit.”

• “The need for simplicity, taken to an extreme, can wipe function away entirely.”

• “Minimalist design encourages us to forget everything a product relies on and imagine, in this example, that the internet consists of carefully shaped glass and steel alone.”

• “For the sake of narrative it’s always tempting to link a biographical cause to an artist’s work, like a stem to a flower.”

• “Curation by definition is not an original act.”

• “Minimalism can be oppressive. The style can make you feel like you don’t belong in a space unless you conform to it, as in upscale cafés or severe hotel lobbies.”

• “(The problem with being both a critic and an artist is that you’ll probably like work that resembles yours.)”

• “It isn’t necessary for a work to have a lot of things to look at, to compare, to analyze one by one, to contemplate,” Judd wrote in 1964. “The thing as a whole, its quality as a whole, is what is interesting.”

• “Writing about emptiness is difficult because words document presence. As soon as you point to something in writing,”

• “Writing about emptiness is difficult because words document presence. As soon as you point to something in writing, it’s there, even if what you point to is empty floor.”

• “You have to know what to look for, even if you’re looking for absence.”

• “According to Minimalist principles, we have to fight the need to anthropomorphize or impose a metaphorical meaning on the installation. The boxes do not symbolize anything.”

• “This is Minimalism’s most powerful and frightening insight. It has nothing to do with the aesthetic cues associated with lowercase-m minimalism, the consumer products, interior decoration, the curated items of clothing. Minimalism doesn’t need to look good. It tries to make us understand that the sense of artistic beauty humanity has built up over millennia—the varieties of colors, stories recounted, and bodies represented—is also an artificial creation, not as inevitable as we think it is.”

• “A definition of art finally occurred to me. Art is everything at once.”

• “you don’t act, someone will decide everything”

• “Art becomes retail surprisingly quickly.”

• “Our heads are victims of the prevailing clutter as much as our spaces.”

• “Silence can be a kind of nothingness, an erasure of the world in favor of a more manageable blankness, an absense of perception. We use silence to paper over experiences we don’t like, creating a blockade between ourselves and sensation. It’s a natual response to the excess of information that we confront every day in the form of emails, texts, advertising, and noise.”

• “As the prestige of language falls, that of silence rises.” Sontag’s evocation”

• “One good thing about extreme simplicity to the point of boredom is that it makes you focus on whatever is available to you,”

• “The simplest tune in the world can become grating just the same over hundreds of listens, the way even the most elegant, seamless design gets boring if you see it everywhere.”

• “all art is made from preexisting material, and any change that one makes is a creative act.”

• “The Generic City is what is left after large sections of urban life crossed over to cyberspace.” Instead of marking the walls with graffiti, we type on our screens. We post photos of things on Instagram instead of creating them for ourselves. We end up in a desiccated malaise: According to Koolhaas, ambience inspires only “weak and distended sensation, few and far between emotions, discreet and mysterious like a large space lit by a bed lamp.”

• “To escape the ambience—to feel anything—we have to be willing to risk hearing something unpleasant and being taken out of our familiar comfort zones. We need to recapture the awe and the surprise of silence.”

• “In Zen they say: If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it’s not boring at all but very interesting,”

• “applause. As Cage wrote, “The”

• “The best purpose is no purpose at all.”

• “Conversation strives toward silence,“23 Walter Benjamin wrote, “and the listener is really the silent partner.”

• “What we require is silence; but what silence requires is that I go on talking,”

• “Minimalism can often lead to a stultifying sameness as everything becomes as simple as possible—the elegant, ambient, blank style that I’ve described. It whitewashes both literally and metaphorically, at times privileging the Westernized, sanitized versions of external influences while deemphasizing their origins. Minimalism’s sources get rebranded as high-minded art made by solo geniuses instead of the products of a globalized culture, even if the artists themselves readily acknowledged their debts.”

• “Minimalism as it appears in the West is inherently oppositional, posing itself against something, as a departure from a current state—cleanliness against mess, absence against presence, and silence against noise.”

• “minimalism itself is not a homogenous thing. It’s the combination of what might at first seem to be opposites, the way light is inextricable from shadow.”

• “We look all around ourselves for instructions on how to live only to be confronted with the basic unknowability of the world. And so we turn to some new mode of control, such as minimalism, only to be infected with the suspicion that it, too, is unreal, a map to no territory.”

• “Anyone who explains this or that, yes and no, is himself the man of yes and no.” To echo the ending of so many of the monk’s analyses: When you understand that, you will understand nothing.”

• “Mono no aware is the beauty of transience, the way a falling leaf or sunlight gilding the edge of a rock at the end of the day can incite a sudden gut-punch awareness that life is evanescent.”

• “The Buddhist acceptance of ephemerality didn’t necessarily kill desire but made it all the more intense by giving the Heians a taste for ephemerality itself; they pursued the most beautiful evanescence possible.”

• “If life was so arbitrary then one may as well embrace the contradictions and the possibilities.”

• “The desire that everything be just right, matched with everything else around it in a unified whole, leads easily to intolerance.”

• “Man first of all exists, encounters himself,24 surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards,”

• “To do is to be.”

• “In the midst of existence, most living things deny time. They grow and reproduce in order to fight the inevitable. Life strives to be permanent, though it cannot be. Even the slow natural decay of a flower in the ground is a consequence of this struggle to survive as long as possible.”

• “It’s not about consuming the right things or throwing out the wrong; it’s about challenging your deepest beliefs in an attempt to engage with things as they are, to not shy away from reality or its lack of answers. To believe or commit too strongly to one particular way of seeing or being is to miss out on all the other possibilities and to allow yourself to be defined too much by one thing.”

• “No wonder that in the twenty-first century, when so many feel modernity has failed the West—that our civilization has come close to destroying itself and our lifestyles appear gaudy and pointless—absence is appealing once more. Embracing it reflects the need for a new way of thinking as well as consuming, one that makes a virtue of incompleteness and irresolution. Minimalism is”

• “Languages, it seemed, did not only sprout in continuity like new branches from the same tree from where they started, but were like different trees that happened to be neighbours stretching their branches, touching each other and sharing structure.”

• “The first slave languages to appear were pidgins—stripped down, unstable codes made up on the spot. It was just adults throwing new words together—words they heard from the white people who owned the estates. But it was children, with the genetic ability to pick up a first language out of all the talk they hear, who pieced together the pidgin words and made them into creoles that could do everything natural languages did. When parents, and indeed a whole community, is reduced to connecting through a pidgin, that pidgin becomes the only input the children get for working out their first language. Fortunately, children are able to take this raw material and impose a regular structure on it, with rules for grammar and syntax and a standardized vocabulary, turning it into a creole. A creole, according to this model, is simply a pidgin that has—due to the innate ability of young children—evolved into a native language and, in the process, fleshed out and become stable. Creole languages were like evolution happening before our eyes.”

• “A story always starts before it can be told.”

• “TODAY, INDIAN AMERICAN FAMILIES like ours represent an American success story. But it is easy to forget that, long before they called us “the good immigrants,” they called us “the bad immigrants.”

• “For much of their history, Canada and America barred Asians from entry. In 1882, America enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first significant race-based immigration ban in the country’s history. America later extended the ban to all of Asia. Canada passed a similar set of laws, and both countries curbed citizenship, land, and other rights for Asian laborers already within their borders. While America’s racial segregation was more explicit, both countries shared a commitment to building a white nation. That changed during the Cold War, when America wanted to promote itself as a liberal democracy capable of leading the world. Politicians reversed decades of discriminatory policy, reinventing America as a melting pot.”

• “In India’s highly stratified society, middle- and upper-class Indians from dominant castes typically access the best schools and jobs that feed into opportunities in America, which favor immigrants who bring specialized skills in tech and science. The result: an American diasporic community that is roughly nine times more educated than Indians in India. These conditions enabled Indian families like ours—families that had been thrice-filtered and stratified—to prosper like few other immigrant groups have ever done in America.”

• “I was, as historian Vijay Prashad observed in The Karma of Brown Folk, “unaware of how we are used as a weapon by those whom we ourselves fear and yet emulate.”

• “When we had nothing to throw back at the slurs thrown at us, when we had to silently swallow the humiliation of knowing that we were inferior in our own country, Yush and I found solace in the idea that success was part of our destiny. The belief that we were exceptional protected us. Until it didn’t. Because stories designed to uphold hierarchies protect only one group—those at the very top.”

• “Myths imbue the ordinary and mundane with celestial meaning. But this is also what makes them so dangerous: They do not reveal truths. Rather, they obscure any part of our realities that do not conform to the fantastical narrative”

• “It is not hard to see how the myth reinforces America’s existing social and racial order, then, seducing its adherents with the promise of belonging in a country where their position remains tenuous and their acceptance is always in question. Rather than fostering solidarity over the ways in which white America disenfranchises those who look unlike them, the myth sows division among Asian ethnic communities. The myth encourages those at the top of the economic ladder to reinforce it, pushing those at the bottom further down. The privilege of the few sets constraints upon the many. The myth erases the legacy of racial exclusion from America’s collective consciousness while perpetuating racial exclusion. The myth creates cognitive dissonance and then tells us that this dissonance does not exist. The myth splits our psyches, then calls this violence peace. The myth forces our minds to forget that which our bodies cannot: that belonging is always conditional.”

• “The problems between you and me began when I started trying to create context around things that were meant to be forgotten. Our problems began when I started searching for a way to explain everything that felt so inexplicable. Our problems began when I was expected to shrink myself, as you had been forced to do, but instead I insisted on expanding.”

• “The world we live in, which demands perfection and achievement, teaches us we cannot love ourselves as we are. The myth teaches us to think greatness always resides outside us instead of within”

• “I used to think that memories followed a straight line, starting at one point and ending at another, held together by the backbone of the strong linear narrative of cause and effect that takes each of us from birth to death. Now I think of memories as haphazard blots of ink in a Rorschach test that we assemble along the spine of the story we are told about who we are. If given enough space, time, and support, we can arrange the memories along a story that we write for ourselves, extracting new meaning from events experienced one way and later understood as another.”

• “I had underestimated the power and the depth of that desire and how the force of that current swept up the rest of us.”

• “There was a time when my outspokenness brought us together instead of tearing us apart. There was a time when speaking my mind was received not as a threat but as an act of love.”

• “I didn’t know how to get the girls in my class to see me as special or good, but I learned that winning over adults was easy.”

• “Even though my friends were not always nice to me, I felt good about myself because I excelled in school.”

• “Now I wonder who we could have been if we saw our ethnicity not as something to manipulate into belonging in white America but as an opportunity to understand why we were treated differently in the first place.”

• “Until then, I thought adults always told the truth. I thought that the rules adults enforced existed to keep us safe, and I thought that adults followed all the rules that they made us follow. I saw this as the distinction between childhood and adulthood: Kids didn’t know the rules for how to behave, and being an adult meant following the rules well. I wondered, then, if sometimes adults told us things that they thought were good for us because they wanted us to behave one way, but they acted another, because that was more convenient for them. This struck me as the most unfair, wrong, unjust thing in the world.”

• “I do not know what India represented to Papa, but I suspect he carried nostalgia for a place that never existed, a utopia created by the frozen impressions and desires of a nine-year-old boy who moved to a white country that shunned him.”

• “In the forgotten history of this influential board game, I recognize the arc of my own obscured cultural past. I see a deep self-knowledge abandoned and forgotten, replaced with a story that asserts the power of the very people who ensured our history’s erasure, then marketed it back to us as our truth. I wonder now how this shaped his psyche and spirit: When, even in his own country, his people’s stories did not matter, he was forced to study his oppressor’s greatness, and learned to deny his own.”

• “In Dadaji’s story, I see how Papa’s ancestors grasped for security by seeking educational attainment, specifically through math and science, and by learning the ways of the white man. In Papa’s lineage, I see people who strove to ascend to feel secure. It is under these auspices that Dadaji rose from poverty and that Papa rose from a lower-class upbringing in Canada to the upper-middle class as an adult. Papa followed this common immigrant road map and imprinted the map upon Yush and me. But along the way, we forgot that this is not necessarily who we are—it is who we felt pressured to become.”

• “A deeply sensitive, wounded brown boy grew into a deeply sensitive, wounded brown man who sought to gain respect, status, and security by embracing the only role that embraced him: that of the high-achieving Indian kid.”

• “The difference in treatment between son and daughter would ripple through generations, one learning entoc: true titlement, the other learning injustice. One sibling would lean into nostalgia for lost culture to justify his behavior, while the other would struggle to reclaim her lost culture, observing how tradition was so often invoked to evade accountability and prevent change.”

• “I saw that on the page, my words mattered as much as those of someone like Shel Silverstein. The page could not ignore me or treat me differently just because I was small or dark-skinned or a girl. On the page, I could show people things that I had trouble showing them any other way.”

• “Creativity poured out of me as a natural expression, touching everything that I did.”

• “It’s not that I wanted to be white, Mummy. I loved my bronze skin. There was no food better than your jeera-and-haldi-spiced aloo gobi. I felt glamorous in the deep-blush silver-lined lehenga that Naniji and Nanaji sent me from India. But I yearned for the freedom that I associated with whiteness. I felt like a simile, my personhood contextualized by whatever popular image I conjured in the minds of others—usually, Apu from The Simpsons. “Thank you, come again!” kids joked, asking if my parents owned a Kwik-E-Mart. They wondered out loud why my hands were brown on one side and white on the other and wanted to know where I was really from. I was envious that white people didn’t have to liken themselves to something else in order to be understood. They could appear as they wanted to appear, without question or comparison.”

• “AS I STROVE TO meet Papa’s expectations, the joy I had once taken from my hobbies faded. Reading, writing, and even painting started to feel rote and mechanical. The fact that things I loved could seem tedious scared me. I read books to extract facts and words, guzzling them like Papa’s nutrient-rich Ensure. I doubt that you or Papa noticed my creativity clamping shut, because I barely noticed. I continued to paint and draw—only now I did it to impress the hypothetical white Harvard admissions officers of Papa’s imagination.”

• “If I could answer Papa’s question today, I would say this: Art kept my spirit alive. Expressing myself, whether by drawing, writing, or dancing, was an assertion of my existence that enabled me to connect to something deeper than simply what I was expected to produce in the world. Later, when I felt too blocked to create, consuming art broke my sense of isolation and helped me see parts of myself in work created by others. When I forgot who I was, creating art helped me find my way back. Art was my entry point to learning how to love myself. Now I feel sad that Papa might not know what it means to connect with oneself or with someone else in this way.”

• “But my treatment of you wasn’t simply mimicry, either. It was a clumsy expression of anger over how mother was raising daughter to learn that to be good is to betray oneself, to forever contort oneself to fit into impossible, contradictory expectations of womanhood that felt stifling.”

• “Papa wanted me to remain invisible. But from what I could tell, dating relied upon being seen, noticed, and chosen. America, too, sat high up on a stage, forcing the rest of the world to behold its spectacle. Being seen—well, that was about the most American thing I could think of. Unfortunately, I was seen as little more than the mule”

• “As I began to love my body, I understood myself beyond my capacity for academic performance. I saw that I was so much more than what others perceived me to be.”

• “Papa’s anger was not new, but this was the first time that I did not see any part of his rage toward me as justifiable. And it was the first time that I recall you piling on, berating me the way that he did. Your words hurt far more than what Papa said. After he was done yelling at me, you yelled for another hour. You said hurtful things, things that sounded like what Papa would say. I knew that you didn’t mean any of it, but I didn’t understand where your anger came from. From you, hateful words sounded clunky and unnatural. It was as if you needed a place to express your anger, and this was the only forum available. I think Papa’s words to me gave you a template for your rage.”

• “He could have shown Yush and me how to love ourselves in the face of whiteness. But he could not teach us what he did not know himself.”

• “The truth is, I had no idea if Drew could have appreciated me for who I really was. I never gave him the chance. I couldn’t accept myself, so how could I let Drew?”

• “I think I know why you busted me: My defiance hurt you. You had become a casualty in the war between Papa and me. You worked so hard to keep the peace at home. And here I was, poking the bull to get him to charge. My antics made a mockery of all that you had put up with to provide stability. I wonder now if you perceived my behavior as a personal rejection, not just of your efforts as a mother but of my duty within the family. Everyone had a role to play, and everyone continued to play their part, except for me. It is true that I took out my anger in ways that were hurtful. I spat in the face of your sacrifice, and for that, I am sorry.”

• “I resented that whenever I succeeded, Papa credited himself and his Indian values, but when I failed, that failure was uniquely mine, a product of my Americanness. I felt so ashamed that I was—as I put it then—“bad at being Indian.” At the time I thought I was abdicating my identity. Now I see that I was asserting”

• “resented that whenever I succeeded, Papa credited himself and his Indian values, but when I failed, that failure was uniquely mine, a product of my Americanness. I felt so ashamed that I was—as I put it then—“bad at being Indian.” At the time I thought I was abdicating my identity. Now I see that I was asserting it.”

• “Yush’s love taught me that a fight does not have to become a war that ends in the total annihilation of another.”

• “I viewed Yush’s talent in science and math as a gift and wished that, like him, I was naturally skilled in the exact ways that capitalism rewards. I never thought about the toll that his success took on him or what kind of pressure he must have felt to maintain it. I thought Yush—whose name means “glory” in Sanskrit—was blessed. Now I know that he was cursed.”

• “Papa said that he valued achievement, but it seemed like he was willing to bend the rules to appear that way—even if that involved cheating.”

• “I thought Papa was in pain because I had been such a bad student in high school. I thought that if I became a Good Indian Girl, our relationship would improve and he would be at peace. I want you to remember that I tried to be that daughter, Mummy. And I want you to know that trying taught me that achieving perfection would not have kept our family whole.”

• “was nervous about my best friends seeing my family life so intimately, and I was nervous about what Papa might find when seeing me with these white friends up close. I felt a dissonance that I could not yet articulate, a tear in what W.E.B. Du Bois called the “double-consciousness” of race, not knowing how to meld my distinct identities. I understood these two versions of myself as Indian—my home self—and American—my outside self. I was anxious that either I would not be Indian enough for Papa or I would not be American enough for Nancy and Marin. Ultimately, I’d be outed as a fraud by everyone I cared about.”

• “EVERYWHERE I WENT, PEOPLE saw me as Indian. But India was the only place in the world I felt American. The specter of India loomed so large over my life, yet my entire actual lived experience with a vast country of over one billion people and hundreds of spoken tongues was probably no more than about three months, total. I do not know how long we stayed when you took me as a baby, when I learned the Hindi that I can still speak in choppy waves.”

• “Your dad would hate to have me as a daughter,” she said. “Why?” I asked. “Because I would tell him exactly what I think, and I don’t think he’d like that.” Then she asked me, “Why do you act like a child when you’re with your dad?” “What do you mean?” I said, getting defensive. I received her question as judgment from a white woman who didn’t understand anything about the stress of navigating life with two different identities. Nancy had crossed a line that she wasn’t supposed to cross. “You pretend to not know things that you know. You ask him questions when you already know the answer to them. You’re smart, but around your dad, you play dumb.” The truth of Nancy’s words hit something deep inside me, a place that I had numbed. In that moment, I felt humiliated—but also recognized. Something I had put to sleep had been awakened, and I could not ignore it.”

• “At the time, I scolded Yush for passing on an opportunity for success that I would never have, a chance to be among the truly elite. But Yush was happier at home. I think Yush would have been happy with a simple life. What I think he didn’t feel sure about was whether, if he chose that simple life, he’d still be loved and respected.”

• “None of us knew then that what Yush dealt with was not an anomaly but a tragically common symptom of the pressures he faced. We didn’t know that Asian American college students are more likely to deal with suicidal thoughts and attempt suicide than white students—straddling multiple cultures, experiencing racism, and living up to narrow expectations of achievement exerts extreme stress on the mind and body. To navigate those pressures, Yush and I learned to repress our feelings and forge onward,”

• “There was no way for us to talk about any of this, because we did not know these problems even existed. We found out about a problem like most families do, when it became so big that it exploded in front of us and we could no longer avoid dealing with it. And we dealt with it the way most families do: quickly and quietly. We swept up the mess, put things back as best we could, and continued to live in the same way, as if nothing had ever happened. We didn’t know that by trying to forget, we were more deeply committing ourselves to the very circumstances and problems that had caused the explosion in the first place. We didn’t know that we were teaching Yush not to resolve his pain but to find more-creative ways to hide it. Now I wonder what decisions Yush would later have made if he had been encouraged to talk about his mental health, rather than feel pressured to stay quiet.”

• “But as our family struggled to find some sense of normalcy, I began to question the idea of normal. Yush’s best friend, who also lived with depression, said, “This is a dumb analogy, but it sort of fits. It’s like in Men in Black. If you don’t believe in aliens, you walk around like everything is normal. But once you become aware of depression and how it lies to your mind, it’s like you know about the aliens. You can’t go back to the way you used to think, and you can’t believe how uninformed you were.” It was not the most eloquent analogy, but it captured my sentiments. For the first time in my life, I began to wonder what else I had failed to see because I had blocked it from view.”

• “Writing demands conviction. But the last thing that I could put on my page was me—not that I even really knew who that was. I prided myself on my ability to be a chameleon: to change myself to reflect what others needed of me when they needed it. This, I thought, was the quality that made me unique—that was what made me me.”

• “I had originally listened to Buaji because I respected her. But that summer, I began to see how owning my reactions and behavior liberated me. By not responding to Papa’s tantrums, I took myself out of them entirely, to the point where I could recognize the absurdity of his actions. I started to understand the directionality of the movement, how it traveled from one source and then stopped at another. His outbursts were a pattern—not an anomaly. I didn’t understand what caused his anger, but I was no longer willing to submit to the repetitive cycle.”

• “Questions are dangerous. Questions lead to dissent.”

• “In our family, loving someone meant rescuing them or letting yourself be rescued by them. But when I needed help to cope with work and the chaos at home, no one in our family had the capacity to support me, because everyone was dealing with their own, bigger problems. As I rescued myself, I wondered if that could be a form of love, too: the ability to take care of oneself well enough to not require saving.”

• “I would not be able to write or paint anything authentic for years, plagued by that question. I would struggle to believe that anything I created could ever really matter, because it didn’t seem to matter to the people who were supposed to love me the most.”

• “In a capitalist society, the measure of wellness isn’t a person’s actual health or happiness but how far one can rise or how much wealth one can accumulate. Somebody seen as “unwell” is unable to produce and to achieve.”

• “I had spent a good portion of my life feeling cheated out of the exceptional family I was told I had. I believed that if I held the same values and followed the rules laid before me, I could make that perfect family materialize. When that didn’t happen, and most of the people around me doubled down on that message—to suggest that we were not happy because I was not adhering to the rules closely enough—I felt like I was losing my mind. Now I had learned that the secret of having a happy family was pretending to be perfect. I felt robbed. I didn’t want to do that, and I couldn’t accept that as the answer. I didn’t understand how no one else in our family felt the same level of indignation that I did over living a lie.”

• “But wasn’t society a little ill, too, for normalizing the idea that the rules didn’t apply to him because of his status?”

• “NO ONE IN OUR family had died, yet I felt an emotional death. My grief wasn’t just about losing my relationship with you. The rickety bridge to my cultural identity had also collapsed. I had mostly participated in Indian culture through family events, like Diwali celebrations or weddings, where I could wear lehengas and speak unsteady Hindi among relatives. As I distanced myself from family, without many friends with whom to create my own traditions, I withdrew from all things Indian. I had once prided myself on being a devoted daughter, but I was ashamed that I could no longer call myself that, either.”

• “I’d been raised to believe that comfort was the result of hard work or innate intellect, but I was starting to understand that fulfillment of these basic human needs was tied to a person’s body, bloodline, and the origins of their birth. Papa’s wealth had made me feel entoc: true titled to a level of security that no one is owed or guaranteed. I had a simplistic understanding of the world and how it worked because it worked well enough for me, and it was only when it stopped working for me that I began to think about the ways in which it failed to work for others.”

• “I began to think of success not as a job toc: true title, wealth, prestige, or social network but as the ability to be myself in the world. To know that, as a woman who had been taught that I needed to serve a man to be complete, I could instead build a life for myself that I loved, and that I could sustain that life by myself. I hoped that, maybe if you saw me live this way, you might choose to come back to me.”

• “At the very moment I started seeing myself as an equal and asked for the same opportunities and rights as my mostly white peers, I was cut down to size, put in my place, reminded that I should be grateful to be allowed among them at all. I saw that I was not valued for my perspectives, only for what I could produce.”

• “MUMMY, I HAD WANTED to think that fame and wealth—conventional notions of success—didn’t matter to me anymore. But they did. I didn’t get approval from you or Papa or Yush, and the desire to be validated was so deep in me that now I sought it on an even larger stage: the whole world, demanding that everyone look at the very thing that no one in our home could acknowledge—my perspective. But now I could see that, while the world loved what I did, it still didn’t love me. I didn’t know what to do with my ugly desire for validation or the world’s ugly response to it.”

• “It’s a strange thing to miss someone who is right there. When I talk to you is when I miss you the most, because I am confronted by what I cannot have.”

• “WE HAD EACH BEEN raised to believe that every unknown could be resolved through willpower and intellect, a message reinforced by America’s rigid conception of who we are supposed to be. The truth is, society doesn’t raise people to aspire to be kind or compassionate or happy. It pressures adults to achieve and accomplish. It teaches people that what matters more than their character or how they treat others or how they feel about themselves is how much money they can hoard, who they know, how famous they can get, and how much power they wield over others. Emotions have no basis in this framework. They are a nuisance, a hindrance, a distraction, a weakness.”

• “I HAD THOUGHT OF love as a taut chain with a tight clasp that carried our weight as we clutched one another, no matter what dragged any of us down. I had believed that when I love someone, I should hold on regardless of what else I have to give up in order to keep them. The more one gives up, the greater the love, I thought. To love someone well was to perform perfection for them, and to be loved well was for them to perform perfection for me. But that is not true love. That is self-abandonment masquerading as love.”

• “I had once thought that I came from a line of Gods, and I had punished myself for failing to be Godlike. But we were not Gods, and I was not the avatar for our family’s unraveling. I was just another product of inherited trauma, unresolved grief, and reactive survival mechanisms, like everyone else who came before me. We were mortals who felt ashamed when we failed to appear omnipotent. Now I see that my job was to release my ancestors from this burden, to allow those who come next the freedom to be ordinary.”

• “Language was always the companion of empire, and as such, together they begin, grow, and flourish. And later, together, they fall.”

• “He buried his past life, not because it was so terrible but because abandoning it was the only way to survive.”

• “‘Every language is complex in its own way. Latin just happens to work its complexity into the shape of the word.”

• “Words and phrases you think are carved into your bones can disappear in no time.‘”

• “A lie was not a lie if it was never uttered; questions that were never asked did not need answers.”

• “‘Whenever the English see me, they try to determine what kind of story they know me from,’ Ramy said. ‘Either I’m a dirty thieving lascar, or I’m a servant in some nabob’s house. And I realized in Yorkshire that it’s easier if they think I’m a Mughal prince.‘”

• “If they’re going to tell stories about you, use it to your advantage.”

• “The English are never going to think I’m posh, but if I fit into their fantasy, then they’ll at least think I’m royalty.‘”

• “Travel sounds fun until you realize what you really want is to stay at home with a cup of tea and a stack of books by a warm fire.‘”

• “‘Translation, from time immemorial, has been the facilitator of peace. Translation makes possible communication, which in turn makes possible the kind of diplomacy, trade, and cooperation between foreign peoples that brings wealth and prosperity to all.”

• “‘That’s the thing about secret societies,’ said Griffin. ‘They’re easy to romanticize. You think it’s this long courting process – that you’ll be inducted, shown a whole new world, shown all the levers and people at play. If you’ve formed your only impression of secret societies from novels and penny dreadfuls, then you might expect rituals and passwords and secret meetings in abandoned warehouses.”

• “‘Language does not exist as a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts,’”

• “So you see, translators do not so much deliver a message as they rewrite the original. And herein lies the difficulty – rewriting is still writing, and writing always reflects the author’s ideology and biases.”

• “He was a child starved of affection, which he now had in abundance – and was it so wrong for him to cling to what he had?”

• “‘What makes the English superior is guns. Guns, and the willingness to use them on innocent people.‘”

• “Unpretty women were so much easier to deal with in some ways—you didn’t have to face the pain of their probable unattainability.”

• “For so accustomed are we to electric lights that the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide”

• “For so accustomed are we to electric lights that the sight of a naked bulb beneath an ordinary milk glass shade seems simpler and more natural than any gratuitous attempt to hide it.”

• “The cleanliness of what can be seen only calls up the more clearly thoughts of what cannot be seen.”

• “An insignificant little piece of writing equipment, when one thinks of it, has had a vast, almost boundless, influence on our culture.”

• “And so we distort the arts themselves to curry favor for them with the machines.”

• “In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.”

• “If the roof of a Japanese house is a parasol, the roof of a Western house is no more than a cap, with as small a visor as possible so as to allow the sunlight to penetrate directly beneath the eaves.”

• “A light room would no doubt have been more convenient for us, too, than a dark room. The quality that we call beauty, however, must always grow from the realities of life, and our ancestors, forced to live in dark rooms, presently came to discover beauty in shadows, ultimately to guide shadows towards beauty’s ends.”

• “This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so simply achieved. We”

• “This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament. The technique seems simple, but was by no means so simply achieved. We can imagine with little difficulty what extraordinary pains were taken with each invisible detail—the placement of the window in the shelving recess, the depth of the crossbeam, the height of the threshold. But for me the most exquisite touch is the pale white glow of the shoji in the study bay; I need only pause before it and I forget the passage of time.”

• “But I see why in ancient times statues of the Buddha were gilt with gold and why gold leaf covered the walls of the homes of the nobility. Modem man, in his well-lit house, knows nothing of the beauty of gold; but those who lived in the dark houses of the past were not merely captivated by its beauty, they also knew its practical value; for gold, in these dim rooms, must have served the function of a reflector. Their use of gold leaf and gold dust was not mere extravagance. Its reflective properties were put to use as a source of illumination.”

• “Beautiful though such a face may be, it is after all made up; it has nothing of the immediate beauty of the flesh.”

• “The unseen for us does not exist. The person who insists upon seeing her ugliness, like the person who would shine a hundred-candlepower light upon the picture alcove, drives away whatever beauty may reside there.”

• “As even this trifle suggests, pitch darkness has always occupied our fantasies, while in the West even ghosts are as clear as glass.”

• “we Orientals tend to seek our satisfactions in whatever surroundings we happen to find ourselves, to content ourselves with things as they are; and so darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty. But the progressive Westerner is determined always to better his lot. From candle to oil lamp, oil lamp to gaslight, gaslight to electric light—his quest for a brighter light never ceases, he spares no pains to eradicate even the minutest shadow.”

• “The older we get the more we seem to think that everything was better in the past.”

• “Yet of this I am convinced, that the conveniences of modern culture cater exclusively to youth, and that the times grow increasingly inconsiderate of old people.”

• “One of the oldest and most deeply ingrained of Japanese attitudes to literary style holds that too obvious a structure is contrivance, that too orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart, that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to “follow the brush.”

• “‘We’ll keep making the wrong decisions,’ a friend told me, ‘and we’ll keep enjoying the consequences.‘”

• “When a person meets misfortune, even drinking water would get stuck in the teeth.”

• “He envied the disciples of the larger sects. No matter what spell, it required self-comprehension after it reached a certain level. But learning from the experiences of the people that had studied it before them would greatly decrease the detours that they had to take.”

• “Work and relax, that was the right way.”

• “Do within the limits, and depend on the heavens.”

• “Behind the most beautiful and exquisite things, was the most dullness and loneliness.”

• “The joy after surviving a calamity made everything seem so beautiful.”

• “To cultivate the sword, what cannot be lost is purity. But the five elements birth and defeat each other, and are difficult to make pure.”

• “Ha ha, cultivation is long and difficult. If there isn’t a strong and resolute heart, how can one achieve the path?”

• “the existing official wasn’t as good as the existing manager.”

• “A clever companion was much better than a stupid one.”

• “Anything that required study, it had to be built from the ground up, there were no tricks.”

• “All kinds of comprehension, it wasn’t a building in the sky. Without a solid base, even if you understood it, you could not produce it.”

• “Cultivation, it was to have a steady heart, and not waver!”

• “In any case, the barefoot weren’t afraid then those wearing shoes.”

• “Stop trying to convince everyone that you suck, focus on the positives“

• “As you get better, the goalposts get further away”

• “Your eye for mistakes grows as your skills do”

• “Sticky notes are a great way of telling you what you failed to do”

• “Relationships are about mutual giving — not about just avoiding everything you don’t both like equally.”

• “People, generally speaking, want outcomes. They don’t care how it’s done or what is used to get there. No one goes to the hardware store to buy a drill. They go there to buy holes.”

• “What’s the point of living your life with your hands and feet tied? You should create a sky shaking, earth shattering way for yourself!”

• “According to the history books, most of the falls of any ancient emperor were caused by their suspicions of their ministers; their suspicions made them ill and therefore led to their death”

• “The waves in the back always push the ones in the front in the Yangtze river, so of course each generation has to be stronger than the next”

• “The hardest part is not learning how to use the tools but know what to do with them”

• “The universe will never give you peace in something you were not meant to settle in”

• “When I was a teen, I’d self harm, but now I just occasionally inconvenience myself in different ways when I feel bad or guilty about something I’ve said or done.”

• “When we’re in a dangerous situation as a child, we’re not allowed to get angry because the abusers are dangerous. So we turn our anger back at ourselves. The abusers contribute to this on purpose, making us feel like we had some control over the situation when we did not. That’s what abusers do.”

• “You’re hurting yourself in an attempt to soothe yourself. And because you had abusive parents who were probably prone to punishment, you’re doing that to yourself. You are imitating them, what they did to you.”

• “They see me ho’ing, they hatin”

• “Thousands of miles fly by in a dream and thousands of years like a racing steed”

• “Taking rejections personally is the biggest enemy of a creative professional. Don’t let your work become your whole identity.”

• “This is your job, and as long as you’re being paid for it, just let it go.”

• “What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out info an idifierent middle age.”

• “we have kitchens to clean because our bellies are full. we have beds to make because we did not have to sleep on floors. our laundry is piling because we have so many clothes to choose from and so many ways to make them dirty. our arms are full because our hearts are full. celebrate the messy. celebrate every little thing that needs to be done. life is too short and too beautiful to let the little things slip away.”

• “It’s easy to say I wish my partner did more for me. It’s hard to do more for your partner”

• “If you stop and think about it, your life is a lot longer as an old guy than as a kid.”

• “To her, reuniting with her Aranara friend is the “result.” But recapturing her past joy and belief in herself is the “process,” and that’s where our help is needed.I’m guessing that her sudden illness made her feel like she may not be able to realize her dreams anymore. It also made it difficult for her to hold onto the happy memories and dreams she had.Everyone has their own imagination. After some chance coincidence, she met an “Aranara.”So as long as we help her rediscover that same feeling she once had, her “Aranara” will return naturally.Oh, so that’s what you’re thinking…Adults only want to believe in objective reality. In doing so, they may unintentionally do harm to the innocent fantasies of children.But I think there are ways to get even subjective things back.”

• “I’m so happy… I almost forgot how it feels to be this happy…You know, at first, it felt like my world had shrunk down to a tiny space.But as long as I continue moving forward, new sights will always appear in front of me, and my world will keep expanding before my eyes.Even though I don’t know how I did it, I know I have you all to thank.Oh, that’s not important. What’s important is that you’ve remembered the joy of going through the world.Our memories don’t just symbolize our past. They can also shine a light on our future.Once you find the hope in your heart again, that happiness will come back to you.”

• “Dreams themselves may be imaginary, but they’re also experiences that can never be relived or replicated.If we were sticklers about truth and fiction, we would’ve missed out on so much beauty and emotion.”

• “That might sound silly to you… Like, why do you have to be happy just because it is? But that’s the magic of a smile. If you don’t believe me, try it. Look at it a few times every day, and you’ll understand.”

• “People use fireworks to remember their most precious memories, and these memories sparkle and shine each time the fireworks fly. In other words, fireworks symbolize the past. And shooting stars make people think of wishes because wishes carry people’s brilliant hopes and expectations for the future. One represents the past, and the other the future. They both bloom in the sky, but have completely different meanings behind them.”

• “Underneath their hard shell is often a vulnerable human, who fails to provide you with nurture because they never received it themselves. Their dysfunctional behaviours are rooted in a painful past. To these parents, their fundamental experience in life is that of being groundless. From a young age, they did not feel protected or guided but were ‘thrown into’ a precarious and scary world. They had to survive challenges, protect themselves and seek direction in the world while their parents remained weak or absent. At some point in their life, perhaps on an unconscious level, they decided they would make better parents to themselves than their real parents could. They took over the role and became the powerful figure they had been searching for. Since their own sense of invincibility is the only thing that they have ever been able to count on, they fiercely protect it with all they have. This is why they demand compliance from others to reinforce their authority and are extremely defensive and reactive to anything that threatens their sense of control. ”

• “One has never found oneself lacking in basic comforts. On the contrary, it is the gesture that one values above all else. So long as you’ve shown proper respect and consideration, the quantity or quality of the gift is but a trivial matter.”

• “A name is but a simple label we carry with us on our journey through the world. Why would one be offended by such a trivial matter?”

• “That is not to say that your words paint an inaccurate picture. One has always lived by a single ideal: eschew all action and abide by no rule. One does as one pleases and speaks as one pleases. Others may critique or praise as they see fit, yet one places little weight in such judgments.”

• “When dwelling between mountain and forest, away from the struggles and troubles of the mortal world, a mortal form is hardly the most fitting of choices.”

• “‘Tis a truth most evident: One always recognizes one’s own… no matter what form they may take.”

• “When it is time for one’s progeny to leave the nest, it is the responsibility of an elder to let them fly free. Yet when your wings grow weary and the night grows dark, just know that you always have a place to which to return. Tis a refuge referred to by many a name in mortal writing: “Home,” “nest,” “haven”… Whatever its denomination may be, its essence remains quite unchanged. One speaks, of course, of a place not unlike one’s own abode. One’s disciples are free to come and go as they wish, yet the door remains forever open to those who wish to return… One rather hopes you count yourself among them.”

• “Tears are a necessary part of maturation. Sometimes, there is scarcely a better vehicle to wash away the toll of stress and misery. Now that the issue has been resolved, you should also take a moment to relax. Give yourself some time to rest, take a nap if you must. One will wake you in due time.”

• “Every individual must find their own path to enlightenment. So long as one retains a pureness of spirit, one’s dietary proclivities are quite irrelevant.”

• “Not unlike the ocean tides, so too shall the movement of people ebb and flow. From turmoil to peace, enlightenment to aspiration — human society possesses limitless potential. In another thousand years, the scene we witness here may change in ways that are impossible for either of us to imagine.”

• “I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”

• “It can be both aggravating and overwhelming when your parents repeatedly raise groundless fears, make false claims or subscribe to conspiracy theories. Perhaps you have realised by now that no amount of reassurance will ease their worries, but you may still be tempted to challenge their thinking or try to eradicate their fears with logic. Besides being futile, these efforts will likely backfire as your parents’ fears are real to them. In fact, these are the pillars of their existence. For many years, they have relied on a rigid and absolute way of feeling safe in the world. They hold onto their defensive system so tightly because if they don’t, their sense of self will crumble. Therefore, the more you try to challenge their views, the more defensiveness and pushback you will face from them. To have a productive interaction, try not to ridicule, tease or undermine their paranoia, or convince them that they may be wrong. Instead, allow them to have their say. If they try to force you to agree with them, it is within your rights to remain firm and honest. You do not have to share their beliefs, but you can validate their feelings, or remain non-reactive. On the other hand, bear in mind that when your parents are in a fearful place, their cognitive abilities will tend to regress, and they may not be capable of abstract thinking or logical reasoning. Therefore, when you speak, try to be clear, explicit and non-metaphorical, to reduce the chances of misinterpretation.”

• “It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday”

• “To survive the lack of or inconsistent parenting input, we learned to withdraw our needs from others and even ourselves.”

• “We fear the thing we want the most.If our experience had taught us that being angry would lead to someone deserting us, or that our sadness was a burden, it makes sense that we default to hiding our feelings. We learn to shut off our emotions – first to others, then to ourselves, to prevent potential rejection or exile from the family and community”

• “As our need for love has been frustrated, we construct a facade of pretending not to have any needs, and eventually, we start to believe we really don’t need love. Then, we feel our lives to be flat and numb. To make up for our inner emptiness, we try to establish our values through ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’. We might be high-achievers in the professional arenas or appear successful, independent, and self-contained, but deep down our battle with perfectionism, shame and loneliness keep us away from living life fully. Our loneliness is perpetuated as we continue to live with a facade, rather than letting others see our raw, unedited self.”

• “When you have a grasp on eternity your eyes won’t ever see the battle or the lost people that hurt you. You will see a beautiful story of hope, in every character.”

• “We feel that we are not a big enough container for our dreams, and we are so used to the disquiet longings in solitude that the idea of getting what we want terrifies us.”

• “Instead of being fixated on the wrong that had been done to me— the obsession to return to innocence— I began to see my heartbreaks as necessary. Without them, I would never have known true belonging, which is inclusive of exile, not in spite of it.”

• “It may seem paradoxical at first glance, but the answer to healing from defensive non-attachment is actually to affirm our ultimate autonomy and resilience. We push away good things in life because deep down, we worry that we would not survive losses and heartbreaks. If we know we are strong enough to go through grieve, disappointment and heartbreaks, then placing our trust in someone’s hand would become much less threatening. To melt away our armour, we ought to feel safe and grounded within ourselves. We could allow ourselves to graduate from a child-like way of need, into a mature, grounded way of relating. As an adult, the basis of our courage to trust and to love does not lie in the hands of others but our strengths. It is not that we have the blind faith that others will not hurt, disappointment or betray us, but we trust that we could grieve, digest the disaster, and bounce back from it. Unlike the helpless child we once were, we are more resourceful, resilient and adaptable than we think we are. We do not have to fear dependency, for we are never truly dependent on another. We are both dependent and independent— and when the time comes, we can summon the strength that is needed to adapt. As children, we need from others utmost reliability, consistency and availability. As adults, we rely on our ability to self-contain and self-soothe. Unlike a child, we know that people can break promises, withhold their love, and change the way they act. But rather than counting on others to create a haven for us, we do that for ourselves. We no longer need our partner to guess our needs, fulfil our desires or stand up for us, but we can assert ourselves to the world. We may also become aware of our deprived needs as a child and the longings, and become our own best parents. We no longer live in fear of ‘being dropped’ as a baby would be; we stand on our own two feet. Rather than being pulled by insatiable hunger, we simply appreciate the love, attention and respect offered by others when they are freely given. Then, our understanding of relationships becomes much more nuanced We do not need absolute safety and certainty, we can hold the paradoxes of trust and disappointment, separation and attachment, and find our ways in the flux of life.”

• “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

• “He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”

• “We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

• “In Hyper-criticalness, you have designed your life to meet very high standards about most things. These might have been standards you have internalized from other sources like your parents or competitive schooling, but they now feel like ‘yours’. You constantly feel like you must be doing something, producing something, and achieving something. You struggle to slow down or relax. In order to meet your own standards, you may sacrifice health, leisure, and relationships. You are perfectionistic and would notice the smallest thing that does not align with the bigger picture. You might also be preoccupied with speed and efficiency and feel anxious if you think you might be wasting time. You may impose a lot of rules, moral standards, and ‘shoulds’ on yourself and others. Even you know being critical of others is detrimental to your relationship, you cannot help yourself.”

• “Things ain’t really been sweet for me, I lost that piece of me, I don’t think that’s peace for me, that might not be meant for me, my heart not something they need and your love not something I need, tough love when you come around me, I’m the bad guy if that’s what they need”

• “Are you looking to move onwards and upwards or run away? Look before you leap, you don’t want to appear the fool do you?”

• “The suffering manifested in your life is you taking on a portion of the collective darkness, you do not deserve this suffering, this is the same as a firefighter going to fight the flames Its even harder if you dont remember you are a firefighter and you find yourself amidst the flames, if you can face the pain in your life with positivity, with light, you are helping this entire planet, every single human being is being helped by that, does this make sense?”

• “You are the Universe in the way that a wave is to the ocean. You are of the ocean but a wave.”

• “We seldom see where the chapters of our lives begin and end until we are gifted the benediction of hindsight. So I’m having my adventures and moving further on the path so I can get that hindsight.”

• “Something I remind myself often is that rejection is simply a redirection.”

• “Dreams are like paper kites, with them do our hopes take flight, sailing high above the clouds, they yearn for something more profound,,yet try we may and try we might, a deeper truth waits in plain sight, though we hang our hopes in skies abound, many joys lie on the ground.”

• “Humans have nothing but unknowns. Even if they act like they know everything, that’s surely a lie. That’s why there’s no way but to spend your whole life learning it. There’s plenty of wisdom you won’t find in a book, and I agree with your opinion, Lyle.”

• “Humans, you know. Someone who wasn’t standing out up to now, when you leave work to them, you see they can suddenly accomplish it? Yeah, that happens. Up to that point, they thought it was fine if they didn’t do anything. But when work’s left to them, they suddenly feel no one but them can do it. That type.”

• “Lyle, don’t think everyone’s the same as you. Without thinking of the consequences, there will surely be some who’ll attack you just because you look like you have money. Make sure you’re firm with monetary exchanges. There were lots of times when I had to give out rewards, and when you end up in that position, it’s easy to understand. If you’re not reliable in such fields, it will affect your credibility.”

• “Don’t just assume that everyone around you is a wise guy like you.”

• “Even here in the Underworld, everybody—even monsters—needed a little attention once in a while.”

• “For some reason sugar and caffeine always calmed down my hyperactive brain.”

• “Percy, the hardest part about being a god is that you must often act indirectly, especially when it comes to your own children. If we were to intervene every time our children had a problem … well, that would only create more problems and more resentment. But I believe if you give it some thought, you will see that Poseidon has been paying attention to you. He has answered your prayers.”

• “My point is you heroes never change. You accuse us gods of being vain. You should look at yourselves. You take what you want, use whoever you have to, and then you betray everyone around you.”

• “The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation”

• “You see, in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But I’m the goddess of marriage, you see. I’m used to perseverance. You have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have to always keep your goals in mind.”

• “Maybe that’s why monsters fade,” I said. “Maybe it’s not about what the mortals believe. Maybe it’s because you give up on yourself.”

• “It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor,” Hephaestus rumbled. “Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.”

• “I don’t know if Daedalus will help you, lad, but don’t judge someone until you’ve stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?”

• “A real artist must be good at many things.”

• “I picked up Pandora’s jar. The spirit of Hope fluttered inside, trying to warm the cold container. “Hestia,” I said, “I give this to you as an offering.” The goddess tilted her head. “I am the least of the gods. Why would you trust me with this?” “You’re the last Olympian,” I said. “And the most important.” “And why is that, Percy Jackson?” “Because Hope survives best at the hearth”

• “there are times when you have to light one fire to put out another. There are no drugs that will make you immune to stress or to pain, or that will by themselves magically solve your life’s problems or promote healing. It will take conscious effort on your part to move in a direction of healing, inner peace, and well-being. This means learning to work with the very stress and pain that are causing you to suffer.”

• “You can’t sail straight into the wind, and if you only know how to sail with the wind at your back, you will only go where the wind blows you. But if you know how to use the wind’s energy and are patient, you can sometimes get where you want to go. You can still be in control.”

• “To a great extent, our ability to influence our circumstances depends on how we see things. Our beliefs about ourselves and about our own capabilities as well as how we see the world and the forces at play in it all affect what we will find possible. How we see things affects how much energy we have for doing things and our choices about where to channel what energy we do have.”

• “Some of our biggest stresses actually come from our reactions to the smallest, most insignificant events when they threaten our sense of control in one way or another: the car breaking down just when you have someplace important to go, your children not listening to you for the tenth time in as many minutes, long lines at the supermarket checkout.”

• “As is so often the case, the public hero that others admire can leave quite a trail of private hurt in his wake.”

• “life is always in flux, that everything we think is permanent is actually only temporary and constantly changing. This includes our ideas, our opinions, our relationships, our jobs, our possessions, our creations, our bodies, everything.”

• “Each person, without exception, has a unique story that gives meaning and coherence to that person’s perception of his or her life, illness, and pain, and what he or she believes is possible.”

• “You can observe a lot by just watching.”

• “a map is not the territory it portrays. ”

• “Much of the time you may get away with being only partially conscious like this. At least it seems that way. But what you are missing is more important than you realize. If you are only partially conscious over a period of years, if you habitually run through your moments without being fully in them, you may miss some of the most precious experiences of your life, such as connecting with the people you love, or with sunsets or the crisp morning air.”

• “In reality we are being driven by our likes and dislikes, totally unaware of the tyranny of our own thoughts and the self-destructive behaviors they often result in.”

• “The means and the end of meditation are really the same.”

• “Patience can be a particularly helpful quality to invoke when the mind is agitated. It can help us to accept this wandering tendency of the mind while reminding us that we don’t have to get caught up in its travels. Practicing patience reminds us that we don’t have to fill up our moments with activity and with more thinking in order for them to be rich. In fact, it helps us to remember that quite the opposite is true. To be patient is simply to be completely open to each moment, accepting it in its fullness, knowing that, like the butterfly, things can only unfold in their own time.”

• “open, “beginner’s” mind allows us to be receptive to new possibilities and prevents us from getting stuck in the rut of our own expertise, which often thinks it knows more than it does. No moment is the same as any other. Each is unique and contains unique possibilities. Beginner’s mind reminds us of this simple truth.”

• “Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that escaping into the woods as a response to a typical, innocently asked Monday-morning question is not a viable option. Instead, I will have to respond.”

• “Goodness me, the social faux pas were I to respond honestly!”

• “After all, if they truly wanted me to do something, wouldn’t they ask, rather than just hint in such a vague way? The whole thing is so fraught with uncertainty: even if I had spotted the implication, it’s likely I’d then spend a frantic few moments second-guessing myself in a panic – ‘But what if they don’t mean that and I end up looking presumptuous?’ – by which time they’ve probably given up and closed the window themselves.”

• “By responding with a ‘Fine, thanks’, I will have lied twice. Once with the ‘fine’ – my weekend was awful and I’m still feeling terrible about it (hence the huge coffee) – and second with the ‘thanks’ – I’ve nothing to be thankful for here: they’ve just forced me to lie about my feelings when I would rather have said nothing at all.”

• “It’s a process I’m very familiar with, whereby I consider every possible likely outcome that I can imagine, and try to figure out how I’ll cope with it should it come to pass, rather like when Doctor Strange visits millions of future timelines searching for the one where the Avengers win the day.”

• “We tend to slide from crisis to crisis when talking to people, and behind it all is a brain whirring over the potential problems, analysing every facet.”

• “The fact is, there’s no discernible logic to turn-taking in neurotypical conversation. It just happens, and it happens fairly well, with interactions only occasionally going wrong. If”

• “The problem is that the earnest zeal with which we approach our favourite things is very rarely matched by the neurotypical listener. I’ve often pondered whether neurotypical people are even capable of the same intense level of interest in a topic.”

• “We may struggle to identify others’ emotions (and our own, truth be told), but I wager most autistic people will eventually notice the boredom on the face of the person we’re sharing with – usually because it’s paired with them telling us to shut the hell up. This hurts. We love our interests and much of the time see them as one of the only topics worth discussing – I mean, surely it’s better than small talk? – and talking about them is so intensely joyful, as well as being cathartic and stress-relieving.”

• “It always feels to me that the neurotypical world puts arbitrary limits on how passionate one is ‘allowed’ to be about a subject. Crossing this line is a social faux pas that ranks somewhere around telling inappropriate jokes at a funeral, but it isn’t based on anything real or important.”

• “though autistic people may struggle to understand neurotypical viewpoints, neurotypicals have just as much difficulty understanding us. The difference is that we’re hyper-aware of our struggle and go out of our way to compensate for the difference, while you lot (with the greatest respect) don’t seem to have a bloody clue.”

• “There’s something about eye contact in Western society that’s peculiar, at least to my autistic eyes. It seems to be held in such high regard for something so fleeting and ambiguous, and the general rule of thumb appears to be that eye contact equals trustworthiness. Far be it from me to question such a bizarre belief (as if liars are incapable of eye contact, and that’s their singular weakness …); it’s enough to note that there are many good reasons why eye contact may be impossible at any given moment, and that placing such high value upon it might therefore be rather ill-advised.”

• “Masking is something that almost all autistic people will learn to do at some point in their life. It often begins in childhood when we realise that something is apparently ‘wrong’ with us. We notice that our social skills don’t seem to cut it, that we’re frequently at a loss to understand what’s going on, and that our attempts to make and keep friends are clumsier or less successful than our peers. We learn that the depth of our interests and the way we express that passion is unacceptable to everyone else, and that our sensory sensitivity annoys people who don’t seem to ever want to understand it. Frequently, we’re mistreated because of all or some of these things; sometimes we’re bullied; occasionally even abused. In this apparently life-or-death situation, it becomes clear to us that we’re going to have to adapt, and so, usually by ourselves and with very little assistance from anyone else, we learn to mask. We learn to adopt a kind of persona – based on all the things our extremely observant brains have noticed in other people – in order to please those around us so they stop bullying us or causing us harm.”

• “Autistic people frequently report using elements of personalities they observe – a friend, perhaps, or even a favourite fictional character – as building blocks for their mask, almost as if we’re constructing them out of LEGO bricks, and I can certainly empathise with this. I would study (still do, though at least now I’m more aware of what I’m doing) personalities with the care of a collector, trying things on like a shopper in the market for a new pair of jeans.”

• “Often – and I did this myself, without being aware of it – we instinctively relax a little on finding out we’re autistic. There’s a strange catharsis in finding out you’re neurodivergent, a kind of epiphany that there’s a reason why things are the way they are. As a result, we exhale for the first time in years, lean into our autistic traits a little, let our mask slip and … well, we pay the price almost immediately. We learn very quickly that our unmasked selves are simply not welcome and so we hurriedly fix our masks back on – nail them firm for fear of them dislodging – and realise we’ll never be free to be ourselves. I think of all the concepts elaborated in this book,”

• “(it’s amazing how cruel a person can be to themselves when trying to explain behaviour caused by a disability they don’t know they have).”

• “Autistic people must be allowed to self-isolate in order to recuperate.”

• “Phone calls are like entertainment radio: dead air is a crime.”

• “Autistic people regularly report feeling like ‘emotional sponges’ – upon walking into a room where some kind of conflict has taken place, we’ll so frequently immediately take on board all of that negative emotion (some might call it the ‘vibe’ or ‘atmosphere’) that it can result in our having to sit down, or even bursting into tears.”

• “Many autistic people report having what we’ve collectively labelled ‘hyper-empathy’ – a kind of extreme set of emotional responses to people and animals in dangerous or upsetting situations. I mentioned my strong response to seeing children in distress earlier, but it’s by no means limited to that. Other interesting features of this type of autistic empathy might include extreme empathy (and I mean extreme) towards animals.”

• “For now, the myth of autistic introversion endures, and sociable autistic people continue to be tarred by that brush, from school age all the way up to retirement. Autistic children at school, spending every lunch and breaktime alone hiding in the library or in some undiscovered nook under the stairs, are not seen as sources for concern. ‘It’s OK,’ teachers may reason, ‘they’re autistic.’ As such they fly low and under the radar, their intense loneliness eventually metastasising into something more dangerous – depression.”

• “we seek to replicate success when we experience it, right down to the minutiae.”

• “Everyone has a fairly standard morning routine of course – the classic ‘shit, shower, shave’ is testament to that, though why anyone would shave after a shower is beyond me. But how many of these people would fear their entire day is going to come crashing down if they accidentally or by necessity swap around the order a little, or, worse, miss something out altogether? If I miss a segment of my morning ritual – for example, the bit where I sit down on the living-room sofa with a coffee and check Twitter groggily – then I’ll feel intensely uncomfortable for hours after, a similar feeling to knowing you’ve left the gas hob on and you’re two hours from home, a kind of jumpy, extreme anxiety based on a fear that something truly terrible will ensue from your own foolishness.”

• “It takes enormous amounts of time and energy to switch focus as an autistic person. I’ve likened it in the past to turning circles for vehicles. Neurotypicals are able to switch tasks as easily as a car can make a U-turn. Autistic people, on the other hand, seem to make U-turns at the same pace as an ocean liner, requiring huge amounts of patience.”

• “An autistic person will have their issues around changing tasks and changing focus, but will eventually manage these on their own terms (with care and a peaceful setting, ideally). Interrupt that slow, gentle process with an external question, demand or event (a partner asking for something, a phone ringing, a knock at the door), however, and all hell breaks loose internally. That slow process, the cruise liner turning about – as painstaking as carefully untangling Christmas lights in early December – is suddenly broken. Our hyperfocus is disturbed and our mood follows a predictable path. The result is likely to be anger, irritation, despair or actual pain; the social relationship with the person making the demand is tarnished and possibly broken, and the cycle continues towards desperately trying to avoid that situation ever, ever happening again. PDA as we know it is born.”

• “I suppose this is a big part of the problem: we autistic people find little workarounds, tricks and bespoke solutions to our personal difficulties. Yet these are often ever-so-slightly odd, meaning that when neurotypical people spot us in the act they may assume that we’re up to no good, in that peculiarly pessimistic way that they have.”

• “Beyond the need for a place to hide and recuperate, special interests enable us to focus our brains in a strangely pleasurable way. When the constant demand of looking at the ‘big picture’ in life gets too much and too boring, the ability to tweak our brain’s lens to precisely focus our laser-like attention on something specific is a wonderful feeling, rather like it’s allowing our brain to do what’s natural for it, rather than expecting it to cope with the wide view, which can feel so … false.”

• “We approach the world like laser beams, I suppose, rather than wider car headlights or floodlights, with everything within the narrow focus of our attention drilled down into its very depths. And this”

• “Autism is called an ‘invisible disability’, and sometimes I think that term might be more literal than we realise.”

• “Because of how poorly the school was accommodating my particular neurodivergence, I was forced to rebel and lie and dissemble, despite the fact that doing so went against every law-abiding, if clumsy, bone in my body. Why couldn’t they allow me to play sports that weren’t team games – like badminton or tennis – or ones that were more ordered and structured, like athletics? Why was it always football and rugby, for goodness’s sake?”

• “No one ever asked me if I really wanted to do it; but then, I didn’t ask myself either.”

• “Authority and hierarchy are social constructs and, as I’ve been at pains to point out, autistic people have our own, different, culture that doesn’t seem to include it.”

• “And so, like an archaeologist drawing conclusions about the past from the evidence of the present day, I can say with some certainty that I must have realised that I had to hide my stims at some point. Why else would they be so subtle, so ‘inoffensive’?”

• “Autistic people often seem to have a very deep and strong sense of what’s right, what’s reasonable and what’s fair. This is not to say that we’re unerring moral arbiters; after all, our sense of what’s fair may be affected by any number of factors, such as privilege, experience, upbringing and so on, and therefore not match others’ opinions and values. Nevertheless, the strength of feeling and conviction is likely to be a feature for many autistic people.”

• “In my experience, autistic people are good pattern spotters and often excellent at working out the rules of any given situation. This is what makes us so good at masking, after all. We figure out the rules, and then we play the game. The problem is that figuring out the rules doesn’t prepare you for how to handle those who decide to cheat.”

• “I find that when my stress levels reach a particular point, my voice begins to falter as a tool, becoming less reliable and less focused, and I begin to lose my vocabulary and grammar. The spoken word is by no means guaranteed in the autistic community, and we don’t deserve to be overlooked as a result of this.”

• “When the ears of the student are ready to hear, then cometh the lips to fill them with wisdom.”

• “The lips of Wisdom are closed, except to the ears of Understanding.”

• “Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”

• “Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates”

• “To the pure, all things are pure; to the base, all things are base.”

• “Nothing endures but Change.”

• “And still more presumptuous are those who attempt to ascribe to THE ALL the personality, qualities, properties, characteristics and attributes of themselves, ascribing to THE ALL the human emotions, feelings, and characteristics, even down to the pettiest qualities of mankind, such as jealousy, susceptibility to flattery and praise, desire for offerings and worship, and all the other survivals from the days of the childhood of the race. Such ideas are not worthy of grown men and women, and are rapidly being discarded.”

• “Nothing can rise higher than its source—nothing is evolved unless it is involved—nothing manifests in the effect, unless it is in the cause.”

• “But do not yield to the temptation which, as The Kybalion states, overcomes the half-wise and which causes them to be hypnotized by the apparent unreality of things, the consequence being that they wander about like dream-people dwelling in a world of dreams, ignoring the practical work and life of man, the end being that “they are broken against the rocks and torn asunder by the elements, by reason of their folly.”

• “Transmutation, not presumptuous denial, is the weapon of the Master.”

• “And, in the degree that Man realizes the existence of the Indwelling Spirit immanent within his being, so will he rise in the spiritual scale of life. This is what spiritual development means—the recognition, realization, and manifestation of the Spirit within us.”

• “I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

• “Disney had reinterpreted Christianity for mass culture.”

• “In numerous ways Disney struck what may be the very fundament of entertainment: the promise of a perfect world that conforms to our wishes.”

• “In an idealized world where wish fulfillment prevailed, Disney had consistently concretized the ideal and provided the pleasure of things made simple and pure the way one imagined they should be, or at least the way one imagined they should be from childhood.”

• “Whether in his movies or in his theme parks, Disney always promised a fantasy in which one could exercise the privileges of childhood—privileges he never abandoned in his own life. This will to power also explained why animation was his preferred medium. In animation one took the inanimate and brought it to life, or the illusion of life. In animation one could exercise the power of a god.”

• “Disney’s best animations—Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi, and Dumbo—were archetypal expressions of this idea. In large measure, they were about the process of a child making his or her claim upon the world, about the process of overcoming obstacles to become whatever he or she wanted to be.”

• “‘In this life you only have a set number of chances. If you grab them when they appear, you’ll succeed. If you don’t, you’ll be doomed to a life of mediocrity.‘”

• “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”

• “I mean, what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives you his bleeding phone number the next morning?”

• “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway.”

• “The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. “For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?”

• “if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”

• “The trouble with most forms of transport, he thought, is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother.”

• “Life was, in short, ridiculously easy and for a while at least they were able to cope with the problems of aimlessness and isolation by deciding to ignore them. When the craving for company became too great they would know where to find it, but for the moment they were happy to feel that the Golgafrinchans were hundreds of miles behind them.”

• “History is never altered you see, it just fits together like a jigsaw. Funny old thing, life, isn’t it?”

• “Sometimes, all it takes is taking a leap of faith and enjoying the adventure.”

• “Elden Ring’s story will still have its special place in my heart. The whole story about this world is a story of gods, greater beings so above the little mortals they pretend to protect, but the end if the game is precisely about the opposite, those small beings each having their own wishes and desires, and deciding what the world should be instead of those eldritch entities. You can rule by yourself an imperfect world, after the greater will is forced to renounce his control over life or death to keep itself here. A scorned woman can choose her own god of undeath, to change the place of the tarnished as oppressed to rulers. The mad prisoner can take his revenge upon the world, by cursing all things so the greater being lose all control over the souls of this land. A silent prophet, with no name for himself, can repare the golden order by himself at the cost of his life, when a goddess like Marika was never capable of it. You and Ranni, the demigoddess spurning the control of the greater will, can together take the gods out of this land to travel far away, and let the Lands Between decide its own fate. Or you can make true the wish of the burning eyed believers, and scorch the whole world to return to the origin of life itself, the ultimate price to shatter the greater will invasion.”

• “The game make you think it’s a story about gods, Marika’s bloodline, heroes of forgotten time, but it’s in fact a story of how those small nobodies spurned by grace that are the Tarnished will have the last words, at the end of a long journey.”

• “Not putting your heart and mind into sword practice makes one merely a slave of the sword”

• “King Calm Sea once told me”—Fairy Meng looked at Meng Chuan and continued—“that cultivation requires one to follow one’s intuition and follow what one likes the most before forging forward. You will go further and further. When you look back after a few decades, you would’ve far surpassed your former self. I’ll share this saying with you as well. Follow your heart and proceed down what you like the most.”

• “Qi will only move when the mind moves. If the mind does not move, then Qi will also remain still!”

• “Okay, stop getting downcast. If you can’t figure things out at the moment, stop mulling over it and think about it again when your head is clearer. Like the old people say, even if the sky collapses, there’s nothing to be afraid of. If worst comes to worst, may it be.”

• “To elevate yourself as a sheepdog amongst a herd of sheeps, you have to understand the rules set by the shepherd. Only if you can understand the rules, can you become a shepherd. If you can’t do either, then your only fate is to toil all your life in a sheep pen. If the shepherd is cold, your wool will be shaved for him. This is called selflessness. If the shepherd is hungry, you shall lay on the butcher block and scream your devotion for his cause”

• “Three millennia of recorded history, fraught with power, lust, and greed. Ninety thousand miles of meditation, only to return to gardening, wine and poetry”

• “A man does not mature into pragmatism; he simply accepts reality more readily. ”

• “If love lives on sharing and chains you like fetters Then hate, more than anything, depends on freedom.” Love and hate coiling and twisting together. Tell me, what can I do to save you? If love is spilt milk, Then who can protect whom? For whom will my heart wait? Tell me, what can I do to save you? If passion is a fatal poison, Then who can protect whom? How can I make this love immortal?”

• “The maturity of a man ought not to come from his own pragmatism, but rather from his ability to accept this trait shown in others. To become gentle, gentle toward others, to let go of grudges and to look at the world with a pair of sympathetic eyes and a compassionate heart. It was not about how many epigrams one could spew out to indicate that they had reached a higher level of wisdom, or about one’s ability to convince others with impressive speech, but rather about the habit of blaming others less and understanding them more. The true sign of maturity was tolerance and the absence of animosity… Those from the top did not compete, whereas those at the bottom fought for every inch. A man of virtue does not show it, whereas those purporting it will flaunt constantly.”

• “the freight of friendship sails for the distance, and the solidarity between brothers outlives heaven and earth…”

• “He had learnt that the most important trait of maturity was to be able to joke about everyone, including himself.”

• “Being a guardian is all about protecting the way, seeing the way and focusing on it. If Heaven’s Laws shows you the way, then what is there to doubt, even when facing death? Good luck”

• “When it comes to helping others, it is the thought that matters. Kindness, no matter how insignificant it can seem at the moment, can often steer one’s life into another, and usually better direction.”

• “Though bones and minds were chained You cut down the thorns again and again Your pride will not be slain From the heart to the veins”

• “Our journey begins anew. Life passes like a fleeting rain, eventually merging with the ground. May our next encounter be… under a clear sky.”

• “Our existence is fleeting as dawn’s dew, destined for oblivion. On the still waters of oblivion, I guide the wandering souls. ”

• “I weep for the departed… Stream forth… The gleam of old blades Restore this lost memory… Apply, your color.”

• “Everyone has a past. But for some, their past is a silent abyss filled with those who drowned in it”

• “Do not go searching for what doesn’t want to be found. For in order to not be found, what doesn’t want to be seen will go through extreme measures to make sure that all who go searching… will wind up not being found.”

• “The sun sets above the blue mountain, the autumn moon with the wind of spring. The morning is fine like hair and night is like snow, whether you succeed or fail when you look back there’s nothing left.”

• “Painting is just that. Taking what looks shit, look less shit until it suddenly starts to look good.”

• “Only when a person had seen more and experienced the true world could he be said to have truly grown.

• “He remembered that the elder had once told him to think whenever he encountered any problems. If he did not understand a particular problem, then he could choose to place himself in the other person’s shoes and think in that person’s position to attempt finding a new line of thought.

• “Separation, Beginning, and Nurture. Beginning is known as the evil of disaster. Its pattern is different from the patterns that make up a person. This event itself is a disaster and has grown into a major catastrophe. Cutting down this catastrophe should originally be a good thing, but in this chaotic set up, once I cut down the evil of disaster, it’ll cause a chain reaction, and it won’t be a blessing but a calamity!’

• “You should enjoy the little detours to the fullest. Because that’s where you’ll find the things more important than what you want.”

• “A true peerless master will not care whether a sect is strong or weak. The apex does not care whether one comes from peasantry or royalty!”

• “A fight to the death, it is not just being scrupulous as the earth, but it is also as courageous as the heaven. When meeting your enemy face-to-face in a narrow path, the braver one will win! Your heart is bright like a mirror, able to see clearly the downy feathers in the autumns; however, you are lacking the will to fight a bloody battle to the end – lacking the courage and enlightenment to fight a battle to the death!”

• “Everyone is just trying to co-exist in this world. If one can’t see others while looking down, one just needs to look up. Everyone should take a step back and notice the high sky and vast ocean. Why the need to talk about killing each other?”

• “The path of cultivation is endless; as long as one stuck to it, this would already be correct. However, in the end, without a little interest, a little personal hobby, wouldn’t it all be meaningless?”

• “Fallen leaves returning to their root; this is but an impossible wish for me.”

• “Time is endless; there will be a day when even the ocean dries up and the mountains erode, a time where even the blue seas turn into mulberry fields. Why the need to suffer like this!?”

• “There is a harsh saying: people who live in peaceful times will not have the fierceness to compete against the heavens for a bowl of rice.

• “Millions of miles along with the endless vicissitudes of life… There are some things that will not change.”

• “The path of the grand dao is solitary.” Li Qiye sighed softly and said: “The 3,000 dao are very long, so as one walks on a path, many things will slowly disappear. Even those who could walk with you towards the apex will eventually leave one day. Walking on the path of the grand dao alone might not necessarily be a bad thing since the day will be inevitable. This way, they can at least enter this endless primordial chaos without any hesitation.”

• “The cultivation world was where the strong ruled. If he couldn’t even protect himself and his family, then what right did he have to show compassion?

• “It’s just that in this world, there were too many unexpected matters, like under special circumstances an ant could kill an elephant, and while straws are light, they could still crush a camel. Some things in this world just don’t have a proper explanation.

• “Life is like a bowl of water. In its blandness, there’s a barely noticeable sweetness

• “All of the glorious moments of the past had become distant memories…

• “The rainy night is beautiful in its mood and endlessness. The plants silently absorb the water and the scent of death on them quietly disappears. This is the beauty of the rain and the taste of life.”

• “What is death… death is to die. If a person dies, then it is death, and if the heart dies, then it forgets… that is death.”

• “The water falling in this puddle today is life. Tomorrow, when there is no water falling, then this puddle is death. Dead water is water without life and flow.”

• “Memories are like water in your palm; it doesn’t matter whether you have your hand open or if it’s holding it tightly, it will still leak drop by drop until it’s all gone. However, the coolness of the water is unforgettable.

• “Love is like a river; the left shore is the joyous laughter that can brighten up 1000 years of sadness and the right shore is an eternal silence lingering under the candlelight. What flows between them is years of fading loneliness.

• “Nostalgia isn’t scary; what is scary is when one is completely lost in his nostalgia and is unable to bring himself out of it.

• “Cultivators walk against the heavens and are destined to be forever lonely…

• “Lonely people always remember every single person that appeared in their life.

• “A person will always have one thing where no matter how clever he is, his calm will immediately collapse. Even when facing endless danger, facing life and death, he will still have to keep on persisting!

• “If you have any problems with your cultivation, you can come and ask me. Remember one thing: having no talent isn’t terrifying, what is terrifying is laziness. Us cultivators walk against the heavens. We can’t relax our hearts and our bodies. If we do, how will we be able to walk against the heavens to cultivate? Go inside, hurry up and cultivate.”

• “Karma is a path after the life and death domain. It can be said that karma is the root of life and death; it is because there is a karmatic cause of life that there is a karmatic effect of life.”

• “It was like a person’s lifespan. Although filled with reluctance and unwillingness to leave when the cold, snowy wind comes, they couldn’t help but be taken by the breeze.

• “The dust was just like heaven-defying cultivators that desired to reach the heavens but were put down by the rain. Just like cultivators, how many specks of dust could actually ascend to the heavens…

• “Falling leaves will all eventually return to the roots of the tree. They were like children who would leave when tired but would always return to their love ones.

• ” Those who seek dao understand in the morning and are dead by dusk, regrettable…

• “However, after 1,000 years of cultivation, there is no way I would take people’s words at face value. Just like black and white, if one looks at them separately, they are very distinct, but if you mix them, then grey appears!

• “After life and death was karma. After Wang Lin’s domain went through a metamorphosis, he was like a head scholar among mortals. He no longer cared about life and death, but pursued the true meaning of the world.

• “There was an old saying: cultivators walk through the heavens and adapt the heavens as their own heart. Only then can they hold both heaven and earth and understand what dao is! Although this sounds complicated, it has its own reason.

• “Seeking dao… In truth, it is bringing the dao into your heart, this is dao-seeking. The so-called comprehension and domain are the same. You keep a comprehension in your heart and slowly experience it until it merges with your dao. Eventually, it will become a domain, an ideal.”

• “The sundered night born from the sea, time flows like memories… It isn’t that there is no eternity, but that a moment of eternity will intoxicate you. It will make your heart shatter. It will make you unwilling to awaken so you can continue pursuing it with a smile forever, until you disappear into eternity in a dream.

• “The greatest distance in the world isn’t the end of the world or yin and yang, but being forgotten

• “The world is an inn for all living things. Time is a guest of the ages. The difference between life and death is like being awakened from a dream!”

• “If you see yourself as part of this world, if you become the heavens and earth, then this rain is your blood. Why stop them… wind, rain, snow, thunder, and all of nature. You are them, they are you, how can they hinder you

• “Leaves have roots. When they fall, they return to their roots. Humans have souls, and the soul feels sorrow when remembering one’s parents.

• ” All people have parents. The sadness of losing both parents seems to slowly dissipate as time passes. However, in truth, it is buried deep within your bones. Who can forget…

• “The life-like dream before one awakens. Life is like a play, but who am I… Dreaming is living and waking up is dying, or the dream is dying and waking up is living… The moments of closing and opening the eyes are the moments of life and death, or perhap it is when one can’t separate the real and fake lives…

• “What is karma? I seek a wooden house, but this mountain has no wood, so I plant this lone tree. During sunrise, I harvest the branches. During midday, I harvest the wood. And during sunset, I harvest the roots… What is karma. Planting the tree is karmic cause and harvesting the wood is karmic effect… The day the house took form, it also became a karmic cycle…”

• “As years pass, people will see the willow leaves cover the city. They don’t understand that the willow leaves come to find the person they are connected to. Each willow leaf represents the entire life of a person…

• “Karma, it can’t be cut because it is void… Karma is karma. Fate gathers to be scattered in the void.”

• “Memories are like water in your palm. Although the water will flow away, the palm will remember the temperature of the water. Then, when the palm holds the water again, the palm will remember, and the water will also remember the warmth of the palm.

• “I cover the world in fire only so you won’t have a reason to be cold.

• “If life and death were a rope, countless lives and deaths would connect together to form circles. These countless circles would form a net, and that net would be karma. This large karma net would be used to catch oneself in the river of reincarnation. The river of reincarnation contains true and false, and only with a pair of eyes that can see through true and false can one throw the net to fish oneself out.

• “A reincarnation is a lifetime, and one has many ties in life. How could it be all cut so easily? This is the power of reincarnation… It can make one unable to free themselves or not want to free themselves.” There was confusion in Wang Lin’s eyes, and he seemed to gain more enlightenment in this confusion.

• “oppressive societies create the monsters they ultimately come to hate and fear.

• “Legs are the wind, the land, and the root of all strength”

• “Whilst the monkey cried incessantly from one side of a river to another, the dreadfully cold wind froze his crotch!

• “How powerful is a practitioner isn’t solely based on the power of his moves, it’s more important that the spirit is strong! If your spirit loses to a pile of broken rocks, no matter how powerful you become you will still be a total failure!”

• “It’s easy to destroy the god in the temple but difficult to destroy the god in your heart.

• “As what Buddhism goes by, if there’s a Buddha in you heart, it’s hard for you to become Buddha.

• “Eight hundred old men idle at home, filled with ambitions that never cease; rising to the heaven after death, clouds still float and water still flows!

• “The sentence that there’s no end to learning is wrong and it should be there’s no end to creating. One can’t achieve only by learning, learning all one’s life. It is creation that has no limit. You’re still young now and need to absorb the stuff that others have created. When your knowledge has accumulated to a certain extent, you must try to create. If you always learn, you will always be a student but once you create a move, you will be master.”

• “I cant keep saying im in a perpetual state of learning to perfect something. Youll never perfect something, you just have to put yourself out there and face trial by fire.

• “When life is weak and one’s direction is lost, coming and going like a lunatic.

• “To the people of Disabled Elderly Village, the disability of the body was not a disability. Their true disabilities lay in their hearts.

• “The true disability is when both the body and the heart are disabled.

• “One’s life was nothing more than a cultivation path, and it was easy to be led astray by an extreme way of thinking. Anyone who didn’t have a mature reflection and unmovable thoughts would easily be led astray by their own heart.

• “the people of the village had said that one can lose a battle, but not their bearing.

• “Ordinary people can only see the danger, but wise people can see the opportunity that lies with the danger. However, only those with the abilities can be able to grasp this opportunity!

• “One should not think about boasting, for after the crisis comes hope. When looking at the sky and sea, a journey taken seems but a smoke!

• “Only by breaking the despair in one’s heart can one blaze with stronger hope and fighting spirit.

• “Heaven never bars one’s way; it’s mostly humans themselves barring their own way by giving up hope! I never give up so I can make my way out alive!”

• “How can a man not have any ambition in this world, if one doesn’t have any, what’s the difference between them and a dried fish?”

• “A true leader can change a bad thing into something good, to twist everyone’s hearts together to form a rope.

• “You only notice the stain in your life but have forgotten the saplings you have left behind. They have already grown into towering trees and lush green forest. Your Highness, look forward.”

• “Big sister, this is the difficult part in breaking the god in one’s heart and breaking the god in the temple. The more terrifying the god is, the more fearful and respectful, the foolish commoners would be, which makes it easier for the gods to receive worships. Imperial Preceptor is trying to reform the popular custom to break the god in the people’s hearts. No matter divine arts practitioner or god, they must work for the people and serve the people.”