Ben > Ben's Quotes

“The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”
― Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

“When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.”
― Umberto Eco

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
― Leonard Scheff, The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

“It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“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.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
― Alan Watts

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”
― Alan Watts

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”
― Alan Watts

“We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“The biggest differentiator between a studio that creates a really high-quality game and a studio that doesn’t isn’t the quality of the team,” said one person who worked on Destiny. “It’s their dev tools. If you can take fifty shots on goal, and you’re a pretty shitty hockey player, and I can only take three shots on goal and I’m Wayne fucking Gretzky, you’re probably going to do better. That’s what tools are. It’s how fast can you iterate, how stable are they, how robust are they, how easy is it as a nontechnical artist to move a thing.”
― Jason Schreier, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

“After fifty-five years of dedicating his life and work to the story of ethical systems, Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principal which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil.”
― Dan Simmons, Hyperion

“It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die. It was still a little hilarious.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy

“Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy

“So the plan wasn't a clusterfuck, it was just circling the clusterfuck target zone, getting ready to come in for a landing.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy

“The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“There is a lot about what is going on here that I don’t understand. But I am participating anyway.”
― Martha Wells, Network Effect

“Yeah, good luck with that. Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.”
― Martha Wells, Fugitive Telemetry

“There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans.”
― Martha Wells, Artificial Condition

“Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol