Will it be preferable to remain mute to prolong our ability to think, or to talk until the very end?
. . .
The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.
. . .
Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we aim high, we’ll get better results.
. . .
People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different for each of us, and a reflection of our personalities. Each of us noticed the details that caught our attention and remembered what was important to us, and the narratives we built shaped our personalities in turn.
. . .
It’s hard to make sense of behavior that’s so different from your own.
. . .
You’re prepared to take responsibility for what you did, aren’t you? Well, so am I. That’s what society needs us to do, not to follow rules without thinking.
. . .
I wish this didn’t affect me so deeply. Would that we could choose the things that trouble us, but we can’t.
. . .
I feel good about what I did, but it’s not like I deserve a medal or anything. Because there are other people for whom being generous comes easily, without a struggle. And it’s easy for them because in the past they made a lot of little decisions to be generous. It was hard for me because I’ve made a lot of little decisions to be selfish in the past. So I’m the reason it’s hard for me to be generous. That’s something I need to fix. Or that I want to fix.
