“This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”

I had taken to dubbing them “man-boys,” which was not nice, I know, but it was true for these people who felt half-formed and opaque to me with no discernible edge or interesting bits. Worst of all, they were different in ways that made no difference. They’d insist that they wanted to “change the world” and “it was all about the journey” and “money was not the goal.” Those were all lies, of course, made more problematic by the fact that these men were lying to themselves most of all.

Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.

We earth men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.

It’s about the search for perfection. We know it doesn’t exist, but it’s our obligation towards football and, maybe, towards humanity to strive towards it. That’s what we remember. That’s what special.

I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today,” he once said, “of which maybe 25 are important. My job is to make some sense of it.

Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves.

I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing.

Separating the design of a product from its engineering was a recipe for dysfunction. Designers had to feel the immediate pain if something they devised was hard to engineer.

As far back as I can remember, I really just wanted to get me some money.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.

We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

THE ’BAD’ PARTS OF TECHNOLOGY CANNOT BE SEPARATED FROM THE ’GOOD’ PARTS.

If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?

What would happen if everyone on Earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?

‘There is not love of life without despair about life.’

Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself.

Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.

Ideology is a virus.

I’m haunted by my future goals, not my past failures. I’m haunted by what I may still become. I’m haunted by my own continued thirst for evolution.

‘What becomes of the artists’ models? … Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?’

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.

Given eternity in which to work, everyone would eventually stumble into the abyss

Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

Today, the luxury industry is like Monopoly. The focus is no longer on the art of luxury; it’s on the bottom line.

“Success,” as Winston Churchill once said, “is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”

We are a nation adrift. We lack neither wind nor sail, we have no shortage of captains or gear, yet our mighty ship flounders in a sea of partisanship, corruption, and selfishness.

By stripping down an image to its essential “meaning”, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Maybe it’s because she didn’t want to be a dancer growing up, she wanted to be an actress, and maybe Mom only sits in when I’m being the thing she wanted to be.

“This sense of personal performance has only intensified as dress codes have broken down over the past five decades. We have more choice in what we wear, the fashion industry thriving on selling us ideas of who we could be. Many are willing performers, though we may not like to admit it.”

An organism that is too greedy and takes too much without giving anything in return destroys what it needs for life.

It’s not about the clothing, it’s about connecting.

There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.

She’d tell me not to worry. She always came back to the phrase she lived by: “If God is with me, who can be against me?” She was never scared. Even when she should have been.

I was still hesitant to let myself let go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness.

The greatest shooter of all time

I think, therefore I am (COGITO, ERGO SUM)

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . .. And one fine morning —— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows. We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

To quote one Valley sage, if your idea is any good, it won’t get stolen, you’ll have to jam it down people’s throats instead.

We now worship at the altar of innovation and youth, versus character or kindness.

It all started as an imitation, so you can’t think about whether that imitation is bad or good. In other words, why moralize on copying inside Japan culture when society as a whole was a copy?

I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

I’d tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.

That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.

“One of the really tough things is figuring out what questions to ask … Once you figure out the question, then the answer is relatively easy. I came to the conclusion that really we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask.”

You are in danger of living a life so comfortable and soft, that you will die without ever realizing your true potential.

FoMO—the fear of missing out.

I’m on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Espace, since I’m positive we won’t have a decent table. But we do, and relief washes over me in an awesome wave.

If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.