Philip Pryme > Philip's Quotes

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#1

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.”
― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

tags: escape, introspection

799 likes

#2

“I had fallen in love. What I mean is: I had begun to recognize, to isolate the signs of one of those from the others, in fact I waited for these signs I had begun to recognize, I sought them, responded to those signs I awaited with other signs I made myself, or rather it was I who aroused them, these signs from her, which I answered with other signs of my own . . . ”
― Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

tags: love, semiotics

62 likes

#3

“I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.”
― Italo Calvino, Cosmicomics

39 likes

#4

“for what is religion if not a kind of madness, and what is madness without a touch of religion?”
― James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack

tags: religion

3 likes

#5

“I prefer the pen. There is something elemental about the glide and flow of nib and ink on paper.”
― James Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mack

tags: craft, handwriting, ink, nib, pens, writing, writing-process

30 likes

#6

“It's never the changes we want that change everything.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

tags: changes

670 likes

#7

“That’s life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it’s nothing. If you ask me I don’t think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That’s enough.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

tags: curses, happiness, heartbreak, life

327 likes

#8

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Diaz

tags: inspirational, writers, writers-on-writing, writing

257 likes

#9

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway."

[Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009]”
― Junot Diaz

tags: creative-process, urge, writers, writing

213 likes

#10

“You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?”
― Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

215 likes

#11

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”
― Junot Diaz

tags: inspirational, writers, writings

67 likes

#12

“We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.”
― Junot Diaz

tags: authors, novels, short-stories, writers, writing

44 likes

#13

“The beauty! The beauty!”
― Junot Diaz, La breve y maravillosa vida de Óscar Wao

26 likes

#14

“When you're sixteen a body like this is free; when you're forty it's a full-time occupation.”
― junot diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

21 likes

#15

“Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

tags: charm, enfp-vs-intj, flirting, game, nerd, nerdiness, nerds, seduction

309 likes

#16

“Things always become obvious after the fact”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

tags: philosophy

163 likes

#17

“If you want to annoy a poet, explain his poetry.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

tags: art, autism, details, intuition, nerd, nerdiness, nerds, poetry, wisdom, wisdom-vs-nerds

196 likes

#18

“What I learned on my own I still remember”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

tags: academia, discovery, education, intelligence, learning, reading, schooling, thinking, thought

221 likes

#19

“The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

tags: internet-addiction, modern-life, modern-society, modernity, modernity-is-a-sickness, slavery, technology-addiction, technology-enchantment

199 likes

#20

“The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do. Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

270 likes

#21

“They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

tags: intelligence, modern-values, priorities, truths, values, wealth-and-virtues, wisdom

173 likes

#22

“People focus on role models; it is more effective to find antimodels - people you don't want to resemble when you grow up”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

tags: celebrities, celebrity, celebrity-culture, modern-values, role-model, role-models, sports, sportsman, sportsmanship, values

151 likes

#23

“The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

tags: autism, intellectual-sophistication, internet, irony, nerd, nerdery, nerdiness, nerds, post-ironic, post-modern, post-modernism, reddit, sophistication, wisdom-vs-nerds, wit

120 likes

#24

“If you have more than one reason to do something (choose a doctor or veterinarian, hire a gardener or an employee, marry a person, go on a trip), just don’t do it. It does not mean that one reason is better than two, just that by invoking more than one reason you are trying to convince yourself to do something. Obvious decisions (robust to error) require no more than a single reason.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

223 likes

#25

“Wit seduces by signaling intelligence without nerdiness.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

tags: art, autism, humor, intelligence, nerd, nerds, sense-of-humor, wisdom, wisdom-vs-nerdiness, wit

161 likes

#26

“We tend to use knowledge as therapy.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

83 likes

#27

“Probability and expectation are not the same. Its probability and probability times the pay off.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb

tags: fact

23 likes

#28

“The irony of the process of thought control: the more energy you put into trying to control your ideas and what you think about, the more your ideas end up controlling you.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

92 likes

#29

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

136 likes

#30

“Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be gamed with a good lawyer.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

52 likes

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