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“Dogs at work and yoga aren’t culture.”
“There in the ER, two hours after I was raped, I begin what will become my pattern with everyone close to me: I reassure him. Instead of crying, “No, I’m not OK!” and asking for his help, I speed past my own needs and arrive at his. He needs me to be OK. “Yes,” I say. “I’m OK.””
“She was brave. Brave like only the very alone can be.”
“If the stone falls hard enough the ripples last a lifetime.”
“But a heart was not enough. She understood that now. What a monster needed most was a plan.”
“To exist is to survive unfair choices.”
“You’re not free just because you can see the ocean. Captivity is a mentality you carry with you.”
“He kept his gaze fixed forward, looking nowhere because such pain could not be expressed while looking into anyone’s eyes.”
“She is proof that there is nothing that cannot happen to someone. That the world doesn’t need permission, that there is no novel evil it won’t embrace.”
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”
“It’s more than just a question of ‘personal space’. I actually crave being alone. I guard my privacy as if the barbarians were at the gates. I find being with other people for extended periods of time exceedingly stressful. I like silence and order.”
“Secrecy is a fragile state, a single time undone and forever finished.”
“Without conversation… the hermit is less witty, less lively and incisive… The hermit gains in poetry what is lost in agility.”
“Tu étais un héros et moi un excentrique, mais cela revient au même, tu comprends ? L’un et l’autre, nous pensions être capables de changer le monde qui nous entourait. Nous étions tous les deux frappés par la même malédiction.”
“Enlightenment is impractical. There’s no point being enlightened if there’s a war on. ”
“I have been told by my friends that, for a person who had traveled as much as I have, I retain less of the obvious things and more of the underneath things than anybody they know.”
“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.”
“This is it. My rape. I knew it was coming. Every woman knows it, anticipates it, fears it, yet also doesn’t believe it will happen to her. And now here it is. My turn.”
“This is the sort of thing poets are supposed to do: they rejoice in storms, they forget their hats.”
“Storage used to be heavy - there were boxes and filing cabinets. Now our stored information is ethereal. It is at once everywhere and nowhere, though we imagine that it is up in the sky because that is where our gods have traditionally belonged.”
“The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more?... To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
“Only when you have control where it is needed can you abandon control where it is not needed. Without a healthy respect for control, we may find ourselves hopelessly lost in the wilderness of the psyche, but without respect for abandon, we never really leave home. The art of ritual has to do with balancing these two in any given moment so that we’re able to be “at home on the road and on the road at home.” This way, we stay responsible to both worlds.”
“Nothing makes sense, God doesn’t exist and man must defend himself as best he can from the ravages of time.”
“Ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question... Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere… Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”
“The stuff in your mind, it wears you down over the years, makes you feel really really old. Because you’re carrying something, and you’re carrying it all the time.”
“I can spend the whole day lying. I don’t actually tell any lies, I just act out one big one.”
“I had shut myself up in his room that night and hadn’t heard from myself since.”
“A man’s riches are the fewness of his wants.”
““I was never lonely,” said [a hermit being interviewed]. He was attuned to the completeness of his own presence rather than to the absence of others.”
“We have accepted the idea that art must have a sophisticated complexity and artists must be trained. Compare this with the culture of Bali where no word exists for the concept of “art” or “artist”. Everyone is considered an artist of one sort or another, because to the Balinese, being an artist is inherent in being human… If your heart is beating, then you are a drum. Stay interested in your heartbeat, and you will find yourself a drummer. If you are breathing, then you are a song. Stay interested in your breathing, and you will find yourself singing. If you are alive, then you are a dance. Stay interested in your life and you can’t help but find yourself dancing.”
“Evil is that the devil doesn’t exist.”
“People confided in him, he was that sort, you know? Strangers opened up to him - clients, people he hardly knew, he was the kind of man people liked to entrust with their sadnesses.”
“I think crazy is just a word people invented to keep the extra-interesting people down.”
“A wise man once said: never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.”
“There are no bad people in the taiga. Most bad people are where a lot of other people are… Taiga cleanses you. This place makes you reflect on your actions. It cleanses your soul.”
“One’s desire to be alone, biologists have found, is partially genetic and to some degree measurable. If you have lower levels of the pituitary peptide oxytocin… and high quantities of the hormone vasopressin… you tend to require fewer interpersonal relationships.”