More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
During World War II, the largest rations went to those engaged in arduous physical labor and those whose work involved reading and writing.
For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.
Bhavishya Mandalapu liked this
What Coleridge said: If I do not greatly delude myself, I have not only completely extricated the notions of time, and space … but I trust that I am about to do more—namely that I shall be able to evolve all the five senses … & in this evolvement to solve the process of life and consciousness.
My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn’t even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.
The Buddhists say there are 121 states of consciousness. Of these, only three involve misery or suffering. Most of us spend our time moving back and forth between these three. Blue jays spend every Friday with the devil, the old lady at the park told me.
I was thinking about what it would be like to live somewhere so beautiful. Would it fix my brain?
Bhavishya Mandalapu liked this
The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck,
In the past, we’d talked about books and other people, but now we talked only of our respective babies, hers sweet-faced and docile, mine at war with the world. We applied our muzzy intellects to a theory of light. That all are born radiating light but that this light diminished slowly (if one was lucky) or abruptly (if one was not). The most charismatic people—the poets, the mystics, the explorers—were that way because they had somehow managed to keep a bit of this light that was meant to have dimmed. But the shocking thing, the unbearable thing it seemed, was that the natural order was for
...more
I hate often and easily. I hate, for example, people who sit with their legs splayed. People who claim to give 110 percent. People who call themselves “comfortable” when what they mean is decadently rich.
All my life now appears to be one happy moment. This is what the first man in space said.
What do you want? I don’t know. What do you want? I don’t know. What seems to be the problem? Just leave me alone.
The Buddhists say that wisdom may be attained by reaching the three marks. The first is an understanding of the absence of self. The second is an understanding of the impermanence of all things. The third is an understanding of the unsatisfactory nature of ordinary experience.
“Do you know why I love you?” my daughter asks me. She is floating in the bathwater, her head lathered white. “Why?” I say. “Because I am your mother,” she tells me.
What Simone Weil said: Attention without object is a supreme form of prayer.
An Arabic proverb: One insect is enough to fell a country. A Japanese proverb: Even an insect one-tenth of an inch long has five-tenths of a soul.
A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.
Sometimes she will come in complaining about seeing things when she closes her eyes at night. Streaks of light, she says. Stars.
I’m always saying he could quit his job if he wanted and we’ll go somewhere cheap and live on rice and beans with our kid.
But lately I’m like a beatnik in a movie. Fuck this bourgeois shit, baby! Let’s be pure of heart again!
“I’m so compromised,” she says.
What Wittgenstein said: What you say, you say in a body; you can say nothing outside of this body.
Once when she was just learning to talk, I ran my hand across her face, naming every part of it. Later, when I put her in the crib, she called me back. First, she asked for water, then for milk, then for kisses. “It hurts. Don’t go,” she said. “What does? What hurts, sweetie?” She paused. “My eyelashes.”
In 2159 B.C., the royal astronomers Hi and Ho were executed because they failed to predict an eclipse.
Studies show that 110% of men who leave their wives for other women report that their wives are crazy.
I will leave you, my love. Already I am going. Already I watch you speaking as if from a great height. Already the feel of your hand on my hand, of your lips on my lips, is only curious. It is decided then. The stars are accelerating. I half remember a sky could look like this. I saw it once when she was born. I saw it once when I got sick. I thought you’d have to die before I saw it again. I thought one of us would have to die. But look, here it is! Who will help me? Who can help me? Rilke? Rilke! If you’re listening, come quickly. Lash me to this bed! Bind me to this earthly body! If you
...more
But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.
2462 other highlighters at the time of reading
But no, feel isn’t the word exactly. What is it that the grad students say? Signify.
“I just feel …,” she says. The shrink cuts her off. “I know, I know, everyone always knows exactly what you feel, don’t they?”
Q. Why couldn’t the Buddhist vacuum in corners? A. Because she had no attachments.
In America, the participating partner is likely to spend an average of 1,000 hours processing the incident with the hurt partner. This cannot be rushed.
Her sister has a deal with her husband. Whatever happens, keep it like in the fifties. Not one word ever. Make sure she’s a nobody.
The Buddha named his son Rahula, which means “fetter.” The Buddha left his wife when his son was two days old. He would never have attained enlightenment if he’d stayed, scholars say.
She thinks before she acts. Or more properly, she thinks instead of acts.
