Quotes
 

I explained to my dear mama, once spoken these precious words of hers would be lost to all but my ears. If, though, committed to a very thin volume, I could peruse her tale at my leisure and no word would be lost when my fickle mind strayed to some other purpose. And better, for the excess books which would be produced from the press could be given for sale, taken around the island so others, far and wide, might delight in her careful narration.
Andrea Levy. The Long Song

My life, like yours, is a constant process of improvisation between my interests and personality on the one hand and circumstances and opportunities on the other. The one affects the other.
Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life by Ken Robinson

We have much to do, and less time to do it in.

Robin Hood - Men in Tights.

Real happiness is an internal state that is often enhanced by looking beyond ourselves to the well-being of others.

Ken Robinson

Projecting Happiness

A few years back, writer Gretchen Rubin decided to embark on a campaign to make herself happier, even though she acknowledges (and assured her husband) that she was already relatively happy. She chronicled her journey in The Happiness Project. The subtitle here speaks volumes (or at least one volume): Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun. She decided to focus on boosting her happiness in different parts of her life, such as marriage, work, play and money. She chose to boost one part per month, for a year.

“Contemporary research shows that happy people are more altruistic, more productive, more helpful, more likable, more creative, more resilient, more interested in others, friendlier,and healthier,” she says. “Happy people make better friends, colleagues, and citizens. I wanted to be one of those people.” On her Happiness Project website, she lists Four Splendid Truths. The fourth, and most salient of these in my opinion, is “You’re not happy unless you think you’re happy. Corollary: You’re happy if you think you’re happy.”

from Ken Robinson. Finding Your Element

https://cdn.evbuc.com/eventlogos/923...tchenrubin.jpg
Gretchen Rubin

The poet Philip Larkin said the best thing to do is "try to be utterly schizoid about it all - using each personality as a refuge from the other."

Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. Dr. Seuss came back and won the bet with Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.
Austin Kleon

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Napoleon Bonaparte

At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender...

And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose

Gravity is just a habit (c) OK GO

(Гравитация есть всего лишь привычка)

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous terms, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else: it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words.

(and so on)

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

Из сериала "Seinfeld"

Y'know I think that even if you've had a relationship with someone, or let's say, *especially* if you've had a relationship with someone
and you try to become friends afterwards, it's very difficult.
Isn't this? It's hard. Because, you know each other so well, you
know all of each others tricks. It's like two magicians, trying to
entertain each other.
The one goes, "Look, a rabbit."
The other goes, "So? ... I believe this is your card."
"Look, why don't we just saw each other in half and call it a night?
Okay?"

"The cat sat on a mat" is not a story. "The cat sat on the dog's mat" is a story.
John le Carre

Из книги Show Your Work by Austin Kleon

The bright May morning lurked in the air, but Quinn fought it off. He turned the chair around, positioning himself with his back to the window, and opened the book.

City of Glass. Paul Auster

In my opinion, Don Quixote was conducting an experiment. He wanted to test the gullibility of his fellow men. Would it be possible, he wondered, to stand up before the world and with the utmost conviction spew out lies and nonsense? To say that windmills were knights, that a barber's basin was a helmet, that puppets were real people? Would it be possible to persuade others to agree with what he said, even though they did not believe him? In other words, to what extent would people tolerate blasphemies if they gave them amusement? The answer is obvious, isn't it? To any extent. For the proof is that we still read the book. It remains highly amusing to us. And that's finally all anyone wants out of a book - to be amused.

City of Glass. Paul Auster.

“I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?"
Death thought about it.
CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.”

Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

Every leaf has been sponged by rain and now they're displaying a mosaic of greens - half-yellow lime, bottleglass and emerald, peacock tail and pigeon feather. I marvel at such variety.


The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

My mother was upset at the thought of my 'acting bad people', because she thought this would corrupt me. (In fact, except in school plays, she hardly ever saw me act.) I wonder if such corruption ever occurs? The question is worth asking. To some extent one has to 'identify' with villains in order to portray them, but there are limits to this identification partly because wickedness is so specialized. (Every actor has a level at which he cannot portray character. He may operate above it or below it.) And we are masked figures; ideally the masks barely touch us. (Such is my view, with which some fools will differ.) I recall a story of an old actor asked to portray an old man, who said with dismay, 'But I've never played an old man!' That was professionalism.


The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

Книга очень неспешно разворачивается, слой за тонким слоем, соврешенно не понятно, о чем она будет. Может быть о чем угодно.

So far visual processing has been mostly linear. There are feedback (the LGN gets information from elsewhere on the cortex, for example) and crossovers, but mostly the coarse and fine visual pathways have been processed separately and there's been a reasonably steady progression from the eye to the primary visual cortex.

From V3, visual information is sent to dozens of areas all over the cortex. These modules send information to one another and draw from and feed other areas. It stops being a production line and turns into a big construction site, with many areas extracting and associating different features, all simultaneously.


Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford

We get used to things because our brain finds consistency boring and adjusts to filter it out.


Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford