“True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”

— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

‘You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.’

— Henri Matisse

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

— Carl Jung

“Age cannot manage to empty either sensual pleasure of its attractiveness or the whole world of its charm. On the contrary, I was more easily disgusted at twenty, and I was less satisfied with life. I embraced less boldly; I breathed less deeply; and I felt myself to be less loved. Perhaps also I longed to be melancholy; I had not yet understood the superior beauty of happiness.”

— André Gide

“What does it matter how cultivated and up-to-date we are, or how many thousands of books we’ve read? What matters is how we feel, how we see, what we do after reading; whether the street and the clouds and the existence of others mean anything to us; whether reading makes us, physically, more alive.”

— Gabriel Zaid, So Many Books

Do I want to be happy? It's a benign plateau of brain-deadedness. I want to be alive and in touch not necessarily happy.

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”