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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Singles are envious of those who are married, and married couples envy those with children, but people with children are envious of singles. It’s an endless merry-go-round. But isn’t that funny? That each person should be chasing the tail of the person in front of them, when no one is coming first or last. In other words, when it comes to happiness nothing is better or worse—there is no definitive state.”
“Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped. Try not to think of upset plans or schedules as personal failure or bad luck. If you can do that, then you can change, in your own self and in your life overall.”
From big things to little, there are some things we simply cannot force to go to plan, no matter how hard we try.
I put myself at the center of everything, does that mean I always see myself as a victim?
As luck would have it, they were currently recruiting,
“You may say that it was the book, but it’s how you read a book that is most valuable, rather than any power it might have itself.”
“Things change, even if you want them to stay the same. At the same time, you can try to change, but you will still remain the same.”
“When you get emotional and say things like ‘help me’ or ‘do more,’ I don’t really know what to do. But if you explain it logically and give me specific suggestions, I can understand.”
“This didn’t just come to you. It happened because you did something for yourself. You took action and that caused things to change around you.”
a lie, but part of a larger truth. Likewise, do the eyes of the sun and moon in our hearts cooperate, without denying each other’s existence, in formulating our perceptions of the world.
We gaze at the moon, illuminated by the sun. Feet on the ground and facing the sky, we go forward, changing as we do. In order to deliver a larger truth to the person looking down at an open page.
So what happened? How come time moved on for me only? Eventually, as I turned thirty, I overtook even the ones who’d always been
older than me. Without becoming anything at all.
Kyaah! The sight of a humungous, fearsome woman squished behind the counter nearly causes my heart to stop.
Not. Genma Saotome is one friggin’ tough, unfriendly giant panda.
It wasn’t that I was actually bullied so much as sort of ignored.
In this family he’s the one who evolved. I’m the unfavorable variation.
planes. I’ll never be a bird, or build a plane. I’ll never be able to fly.
I don’t have any specific milestone in my future that will automatically come around. And nobody to decide when something should start or finish. Creatures that can’t adapt to the environment cease to exist. That’s what natural selection is. In that case, I wish I could just be wiped off the face of the earth. No more life of pain, knowing I can’t adapt, knowing people think I’m a useless mutant. I might not be the biggest talent, but if I just had a scrap of
what it takes to get on in the world, I might be able to make a go of it, even if it did mean playing it a bit dirty sometimes. But I can’t do it.
I’m a place where Wallace lives on? Is that how you make a place for somebody—one person thinking about another?
She is very forgiving, but that might only be a sign she thinks that anger is futile, because she has already given up on me.
“What you have to understand about women is that they can reach a certain point when all of a sudden every little thing that’s ever irritated them becomes too much to bear
my feet stop dead at the sight of a very large woman. Her white button-up shirt is so tight the buttons look in danger of popping off, and her extremely pale skin reminds me of a white glutinous rice cake in a shrine at New Year.
“This kind of thing is also called work—handiwork,” she says in a meaningful tone.
When I worked for the company, what kind of crab was I, I wonder. While still inside the box I was raised to be a manager, but ultimately wasn’t my fate to be eaten up by the organization?
“Belonging is an ambiguous state, you know. Take this place, for example. We can both be in the same place, but having that sheet of glass between us makes us feel as if what is happening on the other side is irrelevant, doesn’t it. Remove the partition, however, and instantly you become part of the same world. Even though it is all one to begin with.”
Things happen as a result of our points of connection, in the past and in the future.”
know that now. Just as every day is equal in value and no less important than all the others. The day I was born, today as I stand here now and the many tomorrows to come.
People find meaning in the bonus gifts for themselves. It’s the same with books. Readers make their own personal connections to words, irrespective of the writer’s intentions, and each reader gains something unique.”
It’s amazing what a difference doing something just once can make.
Until now, I have always thought of things in terms of whether or not they could be useful to me in some way. But that may have become my stumbling block. Now I know the importance of the heart being moved, I have a list of things I want to try.
My plan is to appreciate every new day. And take a wide view of things.
