Matthew

“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“If patterns of ones and zeros were “like” patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? It would have to be up one level at least—an angel, a minor god, something in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form one character in this being’s name—its complete dossier might take up a considerable piece of the history of the world. We are digits in God’s computer, she not so much thought as hummed to herself to a sort of standard gospel tune, And the only thing we’re good for, to be dead or to be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker we call God.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

“مهما كانت الديانة التى بيدها مقاليد الأمور، فسوف تتفتق دائماً وأبداً عن لاتسامح. وسيولد من رحمها محاكم التفتيش وتخرج علينا أعضاء طالبان.”
― Salman Rushdie

“Practice is not about overcoming human problems. It’s not about becoming serene and transcendent. It’s about embracing our lives as they really are, and understanding at every point how deep and profound and gorgeous everything is—even the suffering, even the difficulty. So we forgive ourselves for our limitations, and we forgive this world for its pain. We don’t say, “That’s not pain.” It is pain. You don’t say, “It’s not difficulty.” It is difficult. But when we embrace the difficulty… we see this is exactly the difficulty we need, and this difficulty is the most beautiful and poignant thing in this world. — Zoketsu Norman Fischer”
― Joan Tollifson, Death: The End of Self-Improvement