Tokoro’s Reviews > Tales of Adam > Status Update

'Just as no amount of effort will block the tide, no amount of effort will bring an event to fruition before its time. A man cannot learn to be a hunter before he becomes a hunter. Hunting simply cannot be learned in advance of hunting. It's the same with becoming an adult. A child can no more learn to be an adult before he's an adult than a man can learn to be a hunter before he hunts.'

'When you act, act wholeheartedly and with an undivided will, but leave your ears open to the message of events and don't force the gods to topple mountains into you before you understand.'

'God writes not only in things but events, and to read this writing is the subtlest wisdom of all.'

'To each is given its moment in the blaze, its spark to be surrendered to another when it is sent, so that he blaze may go on. None may deny its spark to the general blaze and live forever....You are sent; you are on your way. I am sent. To the wolf or the lion or the vulture or the grasses, I am sent.'

'The first gift of wisdom is the gift of seeing beneath the surface of things and calling them by their true names. Until now you have named things as they have seemed, not knowing that they have other names that come nearer the truth. This is because children see only the surface of things. When you come to a land where the people marvel at the wisdom of children, know that you are in a land of fools.'

'In either case, the cold will have the space you're trying to defend. It has already entered into everything in these hills—into the ground, into the trees, into the birds and animals and insects, even into me. You alone are suffering because you alone are trying to push back this mighty force with the strength of your puny muscles.'

"God is life in abundance wherever life is found, but not for all in every season. When the locusts thrive, the birds feast and the bison and the deer go hungry; still that place is as full of life as it was before and as full of life as it can be. No place where there is life is a desert, except to man."