The Nix

by Nathan Hill

Any problem you face in a video game or in life is one of four things: an enemy, obstacle, puzzle, or trap. That’s it. Everyone you meet in life is one of those four things.”

The flip side of being a person who never fails at anything is that you never do anything you could fail at. You never do anything risky. There’s a certain essential lack of courage among people who seem to be good at everything.

It’s no secret that the great American pastime is no longer baseball. Now it’s sanctimony.”

She’d decided that about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you’re twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don’t know what your small true part is until much later.

Love—real, genuine, unasked-for love—made room for more of itself, it turned out. Love, when freely given, duplicates and multiplies.

The barometer for the health of the country seemed to be what middle-aged men thought about the behavior of college girls.

instead of enjoying the happy relaxed feeling while I’m having it, I feel this huge sense of dread about the moment I will no longer feel happy or relaxed.

The best way to feel like you really belong to a group is to invent another group to hate.

What Faye won’t understand and may never understand is that there is not one true self hidden by many false ones. Rather, there is one true self hidden by many other true ones.

Because if you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone’s life, you will find something familiar. This is more work, of course, than believing they are enemies. Understanding is always harder than plain hatred. But it expands your life. You will feel less alone.