Michael > Michael's Quotes

“I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
― Mark Twain

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Amulet

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Lessons of the balance.
1. The relentless pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain, leads to pain.
2. Recovery begins with abstinence
3. Abstinence rests the brains reward pathway and with it our capacity to take joy and simpler pleasures.
4. Self-binding creates literal and metacognitive space between desire and consumption, a modern necessity in our dopamine overloaded world.
5. Medications can restore homeostasis, but consider what we lose by medicating away our pain.
6. Pressing on the pain side, resets our balance to the side of pleasure.
7. Beware of getting addicted to pain.
8. Radical honesty promotes awareness, enhances intimacy and fosters a plenty mindset.
9. Prosocial shame affirms that we belong to the human tribe.
10. Instead of running away from the world, we can find escape by immersing ourselves in it.”
― Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

“Write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, read at night, and spend the rest of your time exercising your diplomacy, stealth, and charm.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives