Quotes from Ruth Ozeki

A contagion of sly texts and surreptitious chats ensued as rumors about her and Kenji spread, and by the end of the first week, it was understood by everyone, even the most clueless, that Benny and his family were to be their ostracized Other, against whose strangeness they could define their collective normality.

It's okay to have impossible goals, because if you follow your unreachable star no matter how hopeless or far, your heart will be peaceful when you're dead, even though you might be scorned and covered with scars like I am while you're still alive.

It's going to get dark," she said. "We better go back." She shifted and then knelt beside her dead pet, leaning down until her lips touched their ear. "Goodbye, my dear darling TAZ," she whispered. "I love you. You'll be with me forever." Benny watched, wishing once again that he were the dead ferret.

Of course there are individual books—you may even be holding one in your hand right now—but that's not all we are. At the risk of sounding full of ourselves, we are both the One and the Many, an ever-changing plurality, a bodiless flow. Shifting and changing shape, we encounter your human eye as black marks on a page, or your ear as bursts of sound. From there, we travel through your minds, and thus we merge and multiply.

What's the storm called, anyway?" "Progress." She grinned.

she approached her memoir with a renewed sense of resolve. A rapprochement was what was needed. An unfinished book, left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will, and ruthless determination to tame it again. She kicked the cat off her chair

memories are time beings

it wouldn't matter if I bumped and bounced like a cabbage all the way down until I hit bottom and then rolled out to sea, because at least I'd be safe and dead.

Finally I achieved my goal and resolved my childhood obsession with now because that's what a drum does. When you beat a drum, you create NOW, when silence becomes a sound so enormous and alive it feels like you're breathing in the clouds and the sky, and your heart is the rain and the thunder. Jiko says that this is an example of the time being. Sound and no-sound. Thunder and silence.

Assumptions suck. They're like expectations. Assumptions and expectations will kill any relationship

Perhaps you have heard the Zen motto that says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"?

Think of us as a mycelium, a vast, subconscious fungal mat beneath a forest floor, and each book a fruiting body. Like mushrooms, we are a collectivity. Our pronouns are we, our, us.

He said he didn't need religion because he had jazz.

I should only make myself ridiculous in my own eyes if I clung to life and hugged it when it has no more to offer.

Are you a male or a female or somewhere in between?

Yes, it's good to remember. A lot of people have asked your question, Benny. It's probably the oldest question in the book, but that doesn't mean it's not special to you. Every person is trapped in their own particular bubble of delusion, and it's every person's task in life to break free. Books can help. We can make the past into the present, take you back in time and help you remember. We can show you things

How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal farther?

shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you. It's good to hear your voice again. Good to have you back, and you're just in time, because there's more to do before we're done. Endings are difficult, and we need your help. Are you ready?

The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't know, then where did it go?

everything happens because of your karma, which is a kind of subtle energy that you cause by the stuff you do or say or even just think

When you read these words on a page, what happens to them, when they become you?

Ruth had always been fascinated by the meandering currents of his mind

Emma Goldman wrote an autobiography called Living My Life that Jiko is always trying to get me to read, but I haven't gotten around to it yet because I'm too busy living my life or trying to figure out how not to.

So of course I feel angry, I said, angrily. What do you expect? It was a stupid thing to ask. Yes, she agreed. It was a stupid thing to ask. I see that you're angry. I don't need to ask such a stupid thing to understand that. So why did you ask? Slowly she turned herself around, pivoting on her knees, until finally she was facing me. I asked for you, she said. For me? So you could hear the answer.