Try

Try to understand what you can't explain;
don't try to explain what you don't understand.

Personality

Personality cannot contain divinity.

Computers & art

I'm not afraid of computers that make art. But computers that interpret art will be a much more serious thing.

Earlier affinity

Given that the movement in human development seems to be away from one another, was our earlier affinity the result of mere necessity?

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Before building

Before building anything, make certain that it needs to be built, and that you have conceived the best way to build it.

The errors

Sometimes the errors are what make a thing interesting.

Supernatural

So-called evidence of the supernatural is, rather, evidence of our susceptibility to illusion and error.

Assertion

Ignore assertion.

In neither

Trade habitually in neither hope nor hopelessness; rather, assess the opportunities and limitations of each moment as accurately and honestly as you can, and use this accounting to move to the next as profitably as possible.

No liberty

There is no liberty where there is penury, where there is usury, where there is the imposition of unethical obligation.

Doomed or damned?

If your life-strategy depends upon the good will and assistance of others, you are doomed from the start.

And yet, most other strategies are reprehensible:  better doomed than damned.

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The bigger fool

Which is the bigger fool, the fool,
or one who speaks wisely to the fool?

Anything

I have a prejudice against anything that works to other another.

The wrong path

All paths are the wrong path.
The best we can do is avoid the worse one.

Deserves better

An honest question deserves better than a dishonest answer.

From within

How evil, the one who tries to conjure good from within a corrupt and evil system? Is the only moral course opposition?

Trust more

I trust more what I speak in doubt than what I speak in certainty.

An elaborate joke (Shteyngart)

As soon as one acquired a liberal education, huge parts of life became an elaborate joke.

Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends

Your opinions

Rent your opinions; don't own them.

The first duty

The first duty is to make of yourself something you can love.

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But what we want

The world offers rebirth, recycling, but what we want is renewal, restoration.

Advice

Most advice is bad advice.
So perhaps the best advice
is to ignore advice—
or at least not to seek it out.

So much easier

Why is it so much easier to be wise in theory than to be wise in practice?

More thumbs

That we did so well with thumbs
doesn't mean we should acquire more thumbs.

What you are doing

How do you find out what you are doing?
By doing it, and then looking at it.

Learn it

It's not where you learn it;
it's whether you learn it.

Amazing success

Do so much that with a 99% failure rate still you enjoy amazing success.

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Of hope & disappointment

Hope is like broken glass;
disappointment, when it tries to pass.

Everything

Whom you encounter, and in what order,
determines everything.

Know your place

"Know your place" is what is said
by those insecure in theirs.

Love/hate

We love the implausible;
we hate the impossible.

All true

What was true, what is true, what will be true, is all true.

Opinions

We can study, if we wish, the precursors, but we shall never know the outcome, so we must content ourselves with the interim, struggle with it, or ignore it. Opinions vary on the best option.

All the same (Chambers)

They frequently asked themself what it was they were doing. They never truly felt like they got a handle on that. They kept doing it all the same.

Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

The greatest failure

The greatest failure is for what one was
to be better than what one is.

Hang on

Where nothing is real,
hang onto what is true.

So many

So many mistake horror for glory.

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The world you notice

The world you notice is but a fraction of the world.

In abundance

We swim fine in abundance but drown in irrelevance.

Only

Dread only the unrecoverable error, the irreparable disaster.

Regardless

What is true is true, regardless of whether we hoped it would be true or untrue.

Ditto for what is untrue.

A greater debt

I acknowledge a greater debt to culture than to society.

To dance and depart

We wish to dance with hazard
and depart before disaster.

Ecosystem of poetry

It takes a lot of unsuccessful poetry to make a healthy ecosystem of Poetry.

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The Prisoner (Das)

As the convict studies
his prison's geography
I study the trappings
of your body, dear love,
for I must some day find
an escape from its snare.

Kamala Das, "The Prisoner"

Falling in love

We don't fall in love with a person. We fall in love with what we like about a person, including what we like to dislike about them.

The cure

The cure for love is the lover.

More

More is no substitute for better.

Think!

When in doubt, think!

Cliche

The idea is to not write using cliched language, not to not write about the cliches and stereotypes that speak so richly of human habit.

Mysteries

There are no mysteries; there is only ignorance.

The best things

The best things about our society tend to be the realized worst fears of our ancestors—or things unimaginable to them.

History

You are misreading history
if you are not appalled.

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Never once (Oliver)

The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I      lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever...

Mary Oliver, from "One or Two Things"

Much

Much of what is the same in the 21st century as it was in the 6th will no longer be in the 23rd, or perhaps even the 22nd.

"Conquering" nature

There was nothing to be achieved by "conquering" nature other than self-destruction.

In imprecision

Only in imprecision is there room for decision.

The conjuring

Words conjure ideas, not things.
So do things.

History

History is merely the preferred version.

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The path (Sanderson)

"The question," she replied, "is not whether you will love, hurt, dream, and die. It is what you will love, why you will hurt, when you will dream, and how you will die. This is your choice. You cannot pick the destination, only the path."

Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

Evidence

Evidence may be true but may not be truth.

On reason

Reason supports self-interest or justice, but not chaos.

More on poetry

Poetry is an explosion of nuance pointing at resolution.

On poetry

Poetry is the intercourse between words.

The impediment

The removal or circumvention of the impediment should be the policy, the plan, and the process, second only to the identification of the impediment.

The pain

One's concern should be less with the pain and more with the damage the pain does.

Expansion

Expansion over reduction, except when reduction results in a greater expansion.

The presumptions

The presumptions of the questions
can provide more understanding
than the answers.

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It frees me (Lively)

Like everything else: it enlarges me, it frees me from the prison of my experience...

Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

Vary all things

Vary all things
even in the degree that they vary.