Side Effects

If technology is a drug--and it does feel like a drug--then what, precisely, are the side effects?
--Charlie Brooker

Anecdotes

Be careful around anecdotes; they are the black ice of reality.
--Jim Dwyer

Belonging

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you're in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
--Mary Oliver

Feelings

There's no use in comparing one's feelings between one day and the next; you must allow a reasonable interval, for the direction of change to show itself.
--Lewis Carroll

Joy

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
--Śantideva

Magical

What if I told you a story about how underneath the ocean, there was this giant sea mammal that used sonar and sang songs, and it was so big that its heart was the size of a car, and you could crawl through the arteries? I mean, you'd think that's pretty magical, right?
--Richard Linklater

Euphemism

So much of the conversation about death is euphemism.
--Julienne Grey

Collectively

We have lost the understanding that some human needs cannot be met individually and must be met collectively.
--John R. Quinsey

Cars

Cars are terrifying, and cars are normality itself.
--Adam Gopnik

The Nest

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.
--Pema Chödrön

Grateful

I now inhabit a life I don't deserve, but we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon.
--David Carr

Tact

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
--Abraham Lincoln

Iron Law

The iron law of marriage is that you cannot be happier than your spouse.
--Alvin E. Roth (speech when receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics, December 2012)

Forces

There are forces making for happiness, and forces making for misery. We do not know which will prevail, but to act wisely we must be aware of both.
--Bertrand Russell

Attention

Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness--an empathy--was necessary if the attention was to matter.
--Mary Oliver

Obliged

We're only here for a short while. And I think it's such a lucky accident, having been born, that we're almost obliged to pay attention.
--Mark Strand

Unseen

There's an undeniable unseen world that some people call God and think they know more about than other people. I try not to get hung up on the names.
--Samuel Beam

Give It Up

I'm agnostic because I'm a scientist. Being an agnostic means saying, dogmatically, that we will never be able to know, so give it up.
--E. O. Wilson

Better

You can never know anyone as completely as you want. But that's okay, love is better.
--Caroline Paul

Do Not Know

Though you have known someone for more than forty years, though you have worked with them and lived with them, you do not know everything.
--Mary Oliver