Advice is what you get when the person you’re talking with about something horrible and complicated wishes you would just shut up and go away. Advice is what you get when the person you are talking to wants to revel in the superiority of his or her own intelligence. If you weren’t so stupid, after all, you wouldn’t have your stupid problems...Genuine conversation is exploration, articulation and strategizing. When you’re involved in a genuine conversation, you’re listening, and talking—but mostly listening. Listening is paying attention. It’s amazing what people will tell you if you listen. Sometimes if you listen to people they will even tell you what’s wrong with them. Sometimes they will even tell you how they plan to fix it. Sometimes that helps you fix something wrong with yourself. —Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, 2018

You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank. You’re not your job. You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself… You’re not your name… You’re not your problems… You’re not your age… You are not your hopes… You will not be saved… We are all going to die, someday… What will you wish you’d done before you died? —Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996

The challenge in addressing the utility of our dreams is not whether to reject them outright in an effort to privilege the sort of logical truth the rational mind offers us. It’s to picture a conversation between imagination and intellect, one that might produce an advantageous vision, one the intellect itself cannot discern and which the imagination alone is not able to create. —Barry H. Lopez, Horizon, 2019

An adventure is a crisis that you accept. A crisis is a possible adventure that you refuse, for fear of losing control. — Bertrand Piccard as quoted by Ben Taub, “Profiles: Close to the Sun,” The New Yorker, October 3, 2022

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all. —John Cage, Indeterminacy… Ninety Stories by John Cage (excerpt Story 75), 1959

"Más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo." (The Devil is wise, not because he is the Devil, but because he is old.) —Spanish Proverb (retold by Sypros Enotiades)

At last I said, “How many ways are there to die in space?” “A million.” “Name some.” “The meteors hit you. The air goes out of your rocket. Or comets take you along with them. Concussion. Strangulation. Explosion. Centrifugal force. Too much acceleration. Too little. The heat, the cold, the sun, the moon, the stars, the planets, the asteroids, the planetoids, radiation….” “And do they bury you?” “They never find you.” “Where do you go?” “A billion miles away.” —Ray Bradbury, "The Rocket Man." In The Illustrated Man. New York: Doubleday, 1951.

[Jake’s excuses] I ran outta gas. I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from outta town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts. It wasn't my fault!! I swear to God! —John Landis, The Blues Brothers. 1980.

Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. —G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1909. As paraphrased by Neil Gaiman in Coraline. New York: HarperCollins, 2002

[T]he truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars. —Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 1856

All of Narcissa’s instincts had been antipathetic to him, his idea was a threat and his presence a violation of the very depths of her nature, in the headlong violence of him she had been like a lily in a gale which rocked it to its roots in a sort of vacuum, without any actual laying-on of hands. And now the gale had gone on, the lily had forgotten it as its fury died away into the fading vibrations of old terrors and dreads, and the stalk recovered and the bell itself was untarnished save by the friction of its own petals. The gale is gone, and though the lily is sad a little with vibrations of ancient fears, it is not sorry. —William Faulkner, Flags In the Dust, 1973

There is really nothing you must be.

And there is nothing you must do.

There is really nothing you must have.

And there is nothing you must know.

There is really nothing you must become.

However, it helps to understand that fire burns,

And when it rains, the earth gets wet.

 —Buddhist Temple in Kyoto, Japan (retold by Robert Fulghum)

When we enter into sacred texts as readers, rather than as worshippers—treating them, the way we might the Odyssey or “Beowulf,” as ancient vessels of meaning crafted by people who, like all writers, had their good moments and their misses—we gain much, but we lose much, too. We gain the freedom to read and roam for pleasure. But we forget at our peril that, through most of their history, these have been not books, to be appreciated, but truths, to be obeyed. —Adam Gopnik, "Sacred Arts or How to Read the Good Books," The New Yorker, January 21, 2019

The Church says the body is a sin. Science says the body is a machine. Advertising says the body is a business. The body says: “I am a fiesta!” –Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words. Translated by Mark Fried, 1995 

…there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2

You’re [only] as sick as your secrets. – Michelle Huneven, Blame, 2009

Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense. —Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Most people want to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch. ~Robert Orben, as quoted in The Reader's Digest, 1986

Laughter is far more sacred than prayer, because prayer can be done by any one; it does not require much intelligence. Laughter requires intelligence, it requires presence of mind, a quickness of seeing into things….To be able to laugh, you need to be like a child — egoless. And when you laugh, suddenly laughter is there, you are not. You come back when the laughter is gone….Laugh so that your whole body, your whole being becomes involved, and suddenly there will be a glimpse. For the moment the past disappears, the future, the ego, everything disappears — there is only laughter. And in that moment of laughter you will be able to see the whole existence of laughter [the wholeness of man]….” —Osho, “Existence is a cosmic joke.” The Times of India, August 1, 2012

Listen again to the opening of “Black Dog,” or to Plant’s forlorn wail at the start of “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” or Page’s fingers in full flow in “No Quarter,” or the violent precision of Bonham’s beat in “When the Levee Breaks.” It’s like listening to atheism: the charge is still there, ready to be picked up, ready to release lives. The anti-religious religious power of rock was exactly what my mother feared. I don’t think it was the obvious mimicry of religious worship—the sweaty congregants, the stairways to Heaven, and all the rest of it—that worried her. I think she feared rock’s inversion of religious power: the insidious power to enter one’s soul. —James Woods, “Good Times, Bad Times.” The New Yorker, January 31, 2022

The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.  —C.G. Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Translated by R. F. C. Hull, 1959

The loneliest people can be the kindest. The saddest people sometimes smile the brightest. The most damaged people are filled with wisdom. All because they do not wish the pain they’ve endured on another soul. —Louis Malle, Damage, 1992

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1960

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. —Jung, C.G. Alchemical Studies (Vol. 13 of The Collected Works of C.G. Jung). Princeton University Press, 1967.

Hold on to what is good

even if it is

a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe

even if it is

a tree which stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do

even if it is

a long way from here.

Hold on to life even when

it is easier letting go.

Hold on to my hand even when

I have gone away from you.

 —Pueblo Blessing

We need Shakespeare now because the kind of vision he offers counters some of the forces of individualistic capitalism that embraces one person’s well-being at the expense of another’s, It’s the lack of generosity. When human interactions are reduced to mere contractual relations, they fail, they’re inadequate. —Regina Schwartz, quoted in Chandra Johnson, “What Shakespeare Is Still Teaching Us About Good and Evil 400 Years After His Death,” Deseret News, April 14, 2016.

Lawyers are all right, I guess—but it doesn't appeal to me,' I said. 'I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't. —J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it. —David Sedaris, Naked, 1997

A farmer finds a magic lamp and a genie appears, offering to grant him one wish. The farmer,

filled with envy, says, "My neighbor has a cow. I don't have a cow. I wish my neighbor's cow dies." —Russian Proverb

Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?

Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.

Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?

Conan: Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.

Mongol General: That is good! That is good.

 —John Milius, dir. Conan the Barbarian. Universal Pictures, 1982

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. —Fitzgerald, F. Scott. "The Crack-Up." Esquire, February 1936.

Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. —Pablo Picasso, The Arts: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Covering All Phases of Ancient and Modern Art, 1923

We all live monologues. These conversations with ourselves are the endless, anarchic commentary running in our brains. They contain — just barley— our rage and desperation. They are the rough drafts of spoken discourse, the side trips into daydream irrelevancies, the lusts and prejudices left unsaid but so deeply felt. Ultimately, or interiors monologues amount to a lifelong novel in progress, or perhaps the world’s windiest suicide note. Transcribed, they could tell more about what we are than everything we do…. —Richard Corliss, Time Magazine, 1991

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?” —Don Marquis, The Old Soak, and Hail and Farewell, 1921

Wisdom tells me I’m Nothing. Love tells me I’m Everything. Between the two flows the river of my life. —Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Translated by Maurice Frydman. Durham, NC: The Acorn Press, 1973

Sex may be a little more factual than love. You know whether it was good or not. You know whether you liked it or not. You’re not going to change your mind about it ten years later. – Iggy Pop, Esquire, March, 2007

Nothing rankles more in the human breast than a brooding sense of injustice. Illness we can put up with, but injustice makes us want to pull things down. —Reginald Herber Smith, Justice and the Poor: A Study of the Present Denial of Justice to the Poor and of the Agencies Making More Equal Their Position Before the Law, 1919

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The Evolution of Chastity,” Toward the Future, 1975

We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us. —Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. IV: "Seascape, with a Frieze of Girls"

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine. —Lawrence Durrell, Clea, 1960

Be like a tree in pursuit of your cause.

Stand firm, grip hard, thrust upward.

Bend to the winds of heaven.

And learn tranquility.

  —Memorial Dedication to forester Richard St. Barbe Baker, "Father of the Trees,” A Teachers’ Guide to Arbor Month, rev. 2002

Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way. —Steve Martin, A Wild and Crazy Guy, 1978