Life
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Just Look, Just Feel (21)
Life is very simple. Just sometimes put your head away, sometimes behead yourself, sometimes look with no clouds in the eyes - just look. Sometimes sit by the side of a tree - just feel. By the side ...
The Buddha Said...: Meeting the Challenge of Life's Difficulties
The Buddha Said...: Meeting the Challenge of Life's Difficulties
Life is not a Narrative (22)
Things don't have to reach a peak. They can just go on. You do want to make a narrative out of it, with progress and momentum and dramatic peaks and then a resolution. You seem to see life as having ...
Portnoy's Complaint
Portnoy's Complaint
The Beginnings of Understanding (23)
One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from...
The Zurau Aphorisms
The Zurau Aphorisms
Plan of Life (24)
A general plan of life must involve, in the first place, the obtaining of a financial stability of some kind. I put the limit needed for the humble thing I call financial stability at about sixty dol...
There Is no Second Chance (25)
I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstorm realize. That light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matte...
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Life as a Continual Loss (26)
Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a come losing ...
1Q84
1Q84
Life is Unfair (27)
In other words, let's face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that's unfair, I think it's possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And m...
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Live in Silence (28)
So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us - that's snatched right out of our hands - even if we are left complete...
Sputnik Sweetheart
Sputnik Sweetheart
Lost Opportunities (29)
Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room whe...
Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore
The Planet of Inexperience (30)
We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing wh...
The Art of the Novel
The Art of the Novel
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays