“Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.”

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.

Only doubtful truths need defense.

The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

I only deal in what is real. To be honest, I’ve never thought about what I could get out of football or where it would take me. I just wanted to play. I’m the same now.

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.

Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

At some point, I’ll have to go get a real job.

Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.

We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism.

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.