She understood the world and her place in it. She understood nothing. The world and her place in it were nothing and she understood that.

//Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor, 2015, Welcome to Night Vale: a Novel

I try to make authenticity my number one goal when I go into a situation where I’m feeling vulnerable. If authenticity is my goal and I keep it real, I never regret it. I might get my feelings hurt, but I rarely feel shame. When acceptance or approval becomes my goal, and it doesn’t work out, that can trigger shame for me: “I’m not good enough.” If the goal is authenticity and they don’t like me, I’m okay . If the goal is being liked and they don’t like me, I’m in trouble. I get going by making authenticity the priority.

//Brene Brown, 2010, The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

(..) only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It's as simple and complicated as this: if we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.

//Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

"An orgasm in a complicated mind is always more interesting than one in a simple mind - maybe that's not true, maybe sometimes a simple mind is made subtler and finer as it comes, since that's the most mental activity that's gone on in there for a while - but I mean an orgasm in an intelligent woman is like a volcano in a mountain with a city built on the slope - you feel the alternative opportunity cost of her orgasm, you feel the force of all the other perceptive things she could be thinking at that moment and is not thinking because she is coming, and they enrich it. You still there?"

//Nicholson Baker, 1993, Vox

The most spiritual question in the world is not whether there is a god, or how we came to be in the universe. The most spiritual question in the world does not concern itself with knowing why there is suffering or why we are here; those ponderings stem from the most spiritual question.
The aim of every mystical tradition in any religion is a sincere and relentless pursuit of the answer to the most spiritual question. The most spiritual question is about you.

The question is: Who am I, really?

Brain injury, above all other anguishes known to man, perpetually invites us to embark on the search for our selves. Who are we, other than our brains, really?


//Michael Paul Masson, 2008, Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and its Aftermath

Eventually her sulk burned out. Eventually she calmed enough to realize the truth. You couldn’t fight the tide or change the wind. And if there was a storm? Well, a girl should batten down and bail, not run the rigging. How could she help but make a mess of things, the state that she was in? She’d strayed from the true way of things. First you set yourself to rights. And then your house. And then your corner of the sky. And after that . . . Well, then she didn’t rightly know what happened next. But she hoped that after that the world would start to run itself a bit, like a gear-watch proper fit and kissed with oil. That was what she hoped would happen. Because honestly, there were days she felt rubbed raw. She was so tired of being all herself.

//Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, 2014

Each creature experiences itself as alive and perceives the abundant nature all around it. Existence has no implicit meaning and no explanation. (..) It is as originless and boundaryless as the universe; in fact, it is coterminous with the universe. The night sky is an irrevocable statement of this condition. It gathers infinity into a radiant field and envelops the Earth. It is at once the most blatant clue to the origin of all this and the shroud which negates any possible resolution and leads every trail into wilderness. The night sky expresses the order and cohesiveness of the creation, but also its chaos and arbitrariness. The constellations were one of our species' first attempts to impose its own order and meaning onto the impinging randomness of nature.

We are beings who require a context for each little thing we do but have no context for the whole big thing. This is the primary disturbance within human society and the force that drives us through structures and symbols in search of an impossible resolution. (..)

The modern universe may be random and disordered, but it seems s also exquisitely interrelated and connected down to the minutest layer. Astral mythology and magic reflected this symbolically and symphatetically; later astrophysics has shown that all matter obeys the same laws - that the stars appear where they do for the reason that the wind blows, the grasses sprout, and cells divide.(..)

Science unwittingly misleads us. We can certainly explore the stars and the planet's with instruments. (..) We know a great deal about what is around us, what we are, how we interact, and how we perceive, cognise, and express the nature of things. But for all this, we cannot know and express the creationary event. We can only manifest it.

//Richard Grossinger, 1981, The Night Sky: The Science and Anthropology of the Stars and Planets.

All children are to attend school until the age of sixteen or until they have learned everything, whichever be sooner.

//Jasper Fforde, 2009, Shades of Grey

I mean, think of the meanest person you know. Think of Hitler, even. And then picture him jerking off alone in a room. Suddenly, he doesn't seem so evil and impressive anymore, does he? He seems sort of hilarious and powerless and vulnerable and maybe even like someone you feel sorry for. Back in junior high, our health teacher told us that everyone masturbates. Everyone is a slave to sexual desire, I guess. And so maybe everyone deserves our pity, then, too. Maybe if we would just picture our enemies jerking off once in a while, the world would be a better place.

//Matthew Quick, 2013, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

He knew now why this tranquil life in sea and sunlight on the rafts seemed to him like an after-life or a dream, unreal. It was because he knew in his heart that reality was empty: without life or warmth or color or sound: without meaning. There were no heights or depths. All this lovely play of form and light and color on the sea and in the eyes of men, was no more than that: a playing of illusions on the shallow void. They passed, and there remained the shapelessness and the cold. Nothing else.

// Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972, The Farthest Shore

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.”

— Marianne Williamson

"I'm just a dumb kid. I dress up like an adult and skip school every once in a while to see what being an adult is like. Okay? I just want to know if growing up is worth it. That's all. And so I follow the most miserable-looking adult to work, because I just know that's going to be me someday - the most miserable adult on the train. I need to know if I can take it."
She said, "Take what?"
I said, "Being a miserable adult."

Matthew Quick, 2013, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

He repeated the story he liked to tell us. The one with the small boy who was trying to lift a rock in his garden, and the boy's dad was watching him heave and sweat and struggle, but get nowhere. Eventually the dad asks, "Why don't you use all of your strength?" And the boy says "I am, daddy. I am using all of my strength." And his dad says, "No you're not. You haven't asked me for help."

Nathan Filer, 2013, The Shock of the Fall

Worry is a special form of fear. To create worry, humans elongate fear with anticipation and memory, expand it in imagination, and fuel it with emotion. The uniquely human mental process called worrying depends upon having a brain that can reason, remember, reflect, feel and imagine. (..) Worry is what humans do with simple fear once it reaches their cerebral cortex. They make it complex.

// Edward M. Hallowell, 1997, Worry , Controlling It and Using It Wisely

the future - coming soon to a present near you

//David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, 2014

and we must have faith. i believe we must believe - truly believe, not just give it the word service - believe that things will work out the way they should, providing we do what we should. i think our tendency is to hope things will turn out the way we want them to, much of the time, but we don't do the things that are necessary to do to make those things become reality.

//John Wooden: The difference between winning and succeeding