love is something so easy and obvious that it is practically necessary for us as humans to screw it up just to assure ourselves that nothing is impossible.

there is no paradox.  there is only irony. 

we trade away some, if not much, of our freedom for the feeling of safety that comes with sticking with what we know because the known can only be as scary as it already is, whereas the unknown has limitless potential to be terrifying.

live in the present as if the future is going to become the past that you have changed.

the true history of the world is the history of things dying. what we learn from studying it is that all things die. there are many ways to pretend that this is not the case by making things seem more important than they actually are. it is the job of historians to enjoy doing this. all day long, dedicated historians find ways to cancel out the intrusion of death into all the circumstances that collectively constitute the great extended histories that they look to for clues with which to understand the future. because the future is a product of life and history is a recollection of death, they find nothing useful. but, it keeps them busy until they die.

if it ever seems to us that the world is a place where bad things only happen to good people, it is because we still believe that bad things happening to bad people is a good thing.

he who sees age on the outside of things is doomed to underestimate the vitality of raisins.

with our capacity for desire, there is almost nothing that we are not capable of preventing ourselves from doing.

every time you tell someone that you are going to fly and they talk about gravity, that is doubt.

i sat there afraid that I might discover that the world around me is not real. then i thought: wait. i need fear that only if its true, and if it is, i must consider that while this may be bad, worse than that is living in a world that is only real because i am a coward.