Quotations
A few quotations that I've run across in my readings or otherwise that are meaningful to me. Your mileage may vary.
The magnificence of that leaf astonished me, and I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether
you look, as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is
in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires.
Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
Mere facility, of course, is no more a guarantee of good taste in cooking than it is in music; but without it,
nothing good is possible at all. Technique must be acquired, and, with technique, a love of the very process of cooking.
No artist can work simply for results; he must also like the work of getting them. Not that there isn't a lot of
drudgery in any art—and more in cooking than in most—but that if a man has never been pleasantly surprised at the
way custard sets or flour thickens, there is not much hope of making a cook out of him...Interest in results never
conquers boredom with process.
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man, but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that
will stand adversity.
The [iPhone] became a frightening appendage to a life of already sizable anxiety. My phone became a...sadistic
life coach constantly reminding me that, whatever I was doing, there were more fascinating things to be done.
... I had the general sense that I had allowed technology to run me over. Now I was...a curator of my
life rather than a participant, a man who could walk through a stunning national park while looking up
stunning national parks.
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Distance running is always a negotiation; it's about quieting a compelling, insistent whisper telling you to stop.
