Phil Kim

“As we go through life we gradually discover who we are, but the more we discover, the more we lose ourselves.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“the psychological need to believe that others take you as seriously as you take yourself. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, as psychological needs go, but yet of course we should always remember that a deep need for anything from other people makes us easy pickings.”
― David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“The problem with all students, he said, is that they inevitably stop somewhere. They hear an idea and they hold on to it until it becomes dead; they want to flatter themselves that they know the truth. But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery