"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."
"“…What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I’m afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And what do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind, and stupid.”
"A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate of shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in looking for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."
"For me an object is alive; this cigarette, this matchbox, contain a secret life much more intense than that of most humans. Stillness strikes me. There are motionless things, but they set in motion great movements in my mind. Movements with no end."
"To realize that all your life—you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams there's a monster at the end of it."
"The measure of our mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job."
"Life to me seems absurd. The humor comes, perhaps, from the need I feel to escape the tragic side of my temperament. Its a reaction, but an involuntary one."
"“…What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I’m afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And what do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones, and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. Yet I am not a cretin: lame, blind, and stupid.”
"A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate of shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in looking for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."
"For me an object is alive; this cigarette, this matchbox, contain a secret life much more intense than that of most humans. Stillness strikes me. There are motionless things, but they set in motion great movements in my mind. Movements with no end."
"To realize that all your life—you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person. And like a lot of dreams there's a monster at the end of it."
"The measure of our mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job."
"Life to me seems absurd. The humor comes, perhaps, from the need I feel to escape the tragic side of my temperament. Its a reaction, but an involuntary one."
