Quotes from Ruth Ozeki

And without an external observer, do we all just exist in an array of all possible states at once?

She is very angry with me," Slavoj said in a low voice. He leaned forward and gripped the wheels, trying to rotate them. "She says I am irresponsible. Ach, of course she is right! She says I am a fool to take foolish risks. But vat choice do I hef? I am a poet. Poets must take risks. And I am a fool, so my risks must be foolish. I see no way around this, do you agree?

We live in a bully culture. Politicians, corporations, the banks, the military. All bullies and crooks. They steal, they torture people, they make these insane rules and set the tone.

In reality, every reader, while he is reading, is the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument, which he offers to the reader to permit him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself. The reader's recognition in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its truth. —Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouvé

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, shift your realities and widen your world, but the work of waking up is up to you.

what's the point in beating yourself up when other people will do it for you?

Do not build your homes below this point! Some of the warning stones were more than six centuries old. A few had been shifted by the tsunami, but most had remained safely out of its reach. "They're the voices of our ancestors," said the mayor of a town, destroyed

That's the thing about Jiko, one of her superpowers, is that just by being in the same room with you, she can make you feel okay about yourself.

When I wash my feet May all sentient beings Attain the power of supernatural feet With no hindrance to their practice.   Of

Crazy is the price you pay for having an imagination

You are who you are Benny Oh. Just don't let anyone tell you that's a problem.

This is the chapter in which he praises his young monks for their commitment to a path of awakening and explicates the granular nature of time: the 6,400,099,980 moments40 that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around.

The Public Library is a shrine of dreams, and people fall in love here all the time. Maybe you don't believe this, but it's true. Books are works of love after all.

I guess this is it. This is what now feels like.

The World-Rectifying Catfish targeted the business class, the 1 percent, whose rampant practices of price-fixing, hoarding, and graft had led to economic stagnation and political corruption.

The redistribution of wealth is illustrated in satirical drawings of the time, which depict the World-Rectifying Catfish forcing wealthy merchants and CEOs to vomit and shit out gold coins, which are being pocketed by laborers.

Never be afraid of not knowing, young man. Not knowing is ze practice of poets and sages.

Metal-binding is what happens when you wake up in the middle of the night and can't move, like some gigantically fat evil spirit is sitting on your chest.

Bah. Of course he does! He is a schoolboy! He must learn to read Latin, recite Shakespeare, and drink vodka!

A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean," she said. "A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.

She says I am a fool to take foolish risks. But vat choice do I hef? I am a poet. Poets must take risks. And I am a fool, so my risks must be foolish. I see no way around this, do you agree?

But maybe that was the trick—to accept the responsibility and forgo the control? To love without expectation? A paradox for sure, but such a relief.

it took me a while to learn how to tune my ears so I could hear the Unmade things over all the noise that the Made things were making.

instinctive daddy reflex, the same move that had probably saved me from breaking my neck or hurtling to my death a hundred times, only I'd never seen it in action from this angle before, and I was amazed at its speed and precision. Too bad he didn't have an arm like that he could use to save himself.