"Nothingness is everything to philosophers. If you wonder what everything is, then you also wonder what nothing is. The question is whether you can talk about it and still make sense. Heidegger thought that although being and nothing are not something, we nevertheless have a sense of them in moods like anxiety, joy and boredom. I’m writing a book about Heidegger, which means I’m writing about nothing. The good thing about nothing is that there’s so much of it. Pretty much everywhere you go, there it is."
— Taylor Carman

"Why are you stingy with yourselves? Why are you holding back? What are you saving for—for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now."
— George Balanchine

"It is precisely this isolated, closed human person, thrown back on himself or herself, who is also paradoxically the most open of beings. For persons have intelligence, are capable of intellectualized knowledge, and through such knowledge are open to the entire universe, to everything. Through their intelligence, women and men can take into themselves, in one way or another, all there is - which is not of course to say that they all do so or that even one of them ever does so, but only to say that the possibilities of knowledge open them to all the universe and all the universe to them. A human being is open closure - and thus is more than a 'system,' for no system can have such openness and such closure. "
— walter ong

"If we leave that general descriptive talk where everything which looks like a poem can be called a poem and turn instead to normative talk, we will of course not recognize as a poem everything that looks like a poem. A real poem has to be a successful poem, a successful speech act. In approximately the same way that only a mathematical proof which really proves something can be called a mathematical proof. It is not enough that it looks like a proof. The proof has to prove. For the poem it is not enough to look like a poem. It has to achieve something. "
— Lars Gustafsson