Category Archives: Quotes

"The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day. Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length. It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between."

— Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of the Senses.

On the same page she says that "uncertainty is the essence of romance," which is interesting.

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James Fallows had the best analysis of what Google pulling out of China means. What Afghanistan can learn from Colombia. Robin Hanson's pithy take on efficient markets hypothesis in response to John Cochrane's piece and the ensuing pile-on against the Chicago School. How DNA Testing is Changing Fatherhood is haunting and well-written.

Continuing the James Ellroy theme of talented people being obsessed, here's writer Cormac McCarthy in a rare interview with the WSJ:

I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

The pointer is from Roger Ebert's very interesting Twitter feed. Elsewhere in the interview McCarthy explains why he doesn't travel.

Of course, most Americans are not working on activities that drive them to suicide. The average American spent nearly five hours a day watching television in last year's TV season. It's the highest ever — up 20% from 10 years ago.

On achieving a quiet mind, from British philosopher Alan Watts:

One cannot act creatively, except on the basis of stillness. Of having a mind that is capable from time to time of stopping thinking. And so this practice of sitting may seem very difficult at first, because if you sit in the Buddhist way, it makes your legs ache. Most Westerners start to fidget; they find it very boring to sit for a long time, but the reason they find it boring is that they're still thinking. If you weren't thinking, you wouldn't notice the passage of time, and as a matter of fact, far from being boring, the world when looked at without chatter becomes amazingly interesting. The most ordinary sights and sounds and smells, the texture of shadows on the floor in front of you. All these things, without being named, and saying 'that's a shadow, that's red, that's brown, that's somebody's foot.' When you don't name things anymore, you start seeing them.

To turn off the mind and observe things without naming them — to really observe them. To smell the roses instead of analyzing them: I aspire to the level of mind control which I hear enables such present moment living.

Oh, silent meditation retreat, where art thou?

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Here's my post on self-consciousness and one on the art of self-overhearing. Thanks to Colin Marshall for the pointer.

"It was just a brief moment, and already it’s over.  Once more I see the furniture all around me, the pattern on the old wallpaper, and the sun through the dusty panes.  I saw the truth for a moment.  For a moment I was consciously what great men are their entire lives.  I recall their words and deeds and wonder if they were also successfully tempted by the Demon of Reality.  To know nothing about yourself is to live.  To know yourself badly is to think.  To know yourself in a flash, as I did in this moment, is to have a fleeting notion of the intimate monad, the soul’s magic word.  But that sudden light scorches everything, consumes everything.  It strips us naked of even ourselves."

— Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese novelist, in The Book of Disquiet. Here's the Google Book page.

The quote is via Scott Sumner who identifies as a personal identity skeptic. Paul Graham wrote an essential essay called Keeping Your Identity Small. Here are my other posts on identity.