Perhaps extreme danger strips us of all pretenses, all ambitions, all confusions, focusing us more intensely than we are otherwise ever focused, so that we remember what we otherwise spend most of our lives forgetting: that our nature and purpose is, more than anything else, to love and to make love, to take joy from the beauty of the world, to live with an awareness that the future is not as real a place for any of us as are the present and the past. |
Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one. Shoe salesmen and short-order cooks who look boring from the outside - some have weirder lives than you. Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph, good and evil, despair and hope. You and me - we aren't so special, bro. |
Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy. |
Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind. |
The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion. |
We are an arrogant species, full of terrible potential, but we also have a great capacity for love, friendship, generosity, kindness, faith, hope, and joy. |
We're not here to leave a mark, bro. Monuments, legacies, marks - that's where we always go wrong. We're here to revel in the world, to soak in the awesomeness of it, to enjoy the ride. The world's maximum perfect as it is, beauty from horizon to horizon. Any mark any of us tries to leave - hell, it's only graffitti. Any mark anyone leaves is no better than vandalism. |
When I was eight I remember writing one about the perfect puppy, ... I guess I always liked dogs, too. I was always fascinated with dogs. |
When tempest tossed, embrace chaos |
Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled. |
Writing a novel is like making love, but it's also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it's like making love while having a tooth pulled. |