It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.

P. D. Ouspensky

All questioning is a way of avoiding the real answer, which, as Zen tells us, is really known already. Every man is enlightened, but wishes he wasn’t. Every man knows he must love his enemies, but he doesn’t wish to know it – so he asks questions.

- R. H. Blyth

People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains; a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; a book to read when you’re alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.

Betty Smith

Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

Neil Gaiman, “Instructions”, from Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

If someone here told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages, and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page, I should write ‘I recognize one duty, and that is to love.’ And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no. I say no with all my strength.

~ Albert Camus, Notebooks

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone 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 past this phase, they quit.

~ Ira Glass

You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.

E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

I’ve solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That’s the magic key! You mustn’t let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price.