adam shand

There is nothing wrong with making things up. You blame yourself, you blame other people, you guess at reasons — these are all examples of made up stuff. There is a plot line, and which are making up is drama; is art. Yet if you think that this art is real, then you begin to suffer. You are building a prison cell To live in. It is the job of the koan to take down the walls of such prisons, to undermine your fictions. Then, you might discover that you are not really suffering from other people or from circumstances you're suffering from your maps, your stories, your fiction, your prison. You are suffering from bad art. — John Tarrant, “Bring Me the Rhinoceros”

I would like to beg you, dear Sir, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a foreign language. Don't search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet #4”

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. — Joseph Campbell, “The Power of Myth”

I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. — Rudyard Kipling

The ultimate goal of farming is the not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. — Masanobu Fukuoka

I crawled up their asshole and I'm going to change them from the bloodstream. — Michael Reynolds, “Garbage Warrior”

Energy is an eternal delight, and he who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. — William Blake

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get paste this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And i took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. — Ira Glass

Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it. — Indian proverb, Songlines

My possessions fly away from me. Like locusts they are on the wing, flying. — A lament on the destruction of Ur, “Songlines”

I am larger and better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. — Walt Whitman

A wounded bear on your head is not a matter for levity. — Mike Oehler, “The $50 and Up Underground House Book”

There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. — Leonard Cohen

Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple. — Bill Mollison

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it's a strength. — Elisabeth Shue

The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now. — Chinese Proverb

In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. — Bill Watterson

American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers. — W. Somerset Maugham, “The Razor's Edge”

Knowledge is a public good and increases in value as the number of people possessing it increases. — John Wilbanks

Fuck it dude, don't think about tomorrow. Do whatever, now. — Aleks Suchecki, comment on the Take It Easy Manifesto

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. — Steve Jobs

Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart — Brene Brown, “The Power of Vulnerability”

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions. — Hafiz

We have never met anyone who had low self-esteem at the moment of orgasm. — Catherine Liszt, “The Ethical Slut”

And god help us all not to be so stone surprised when we wake up in the stars with the skies in our eyes. — Violent Femmes, “Lies”

Chaos should be regarded as very good news. — Chogyam Trungpa (From the introduction to “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron)

I get asked, “Doesn't it bother you when people call you a Nazi?” No, and for a very simple reason: no one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and ravished by someone dressed as a liberal. — P.J. O'Rourke

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. — blue_beetle