I am.

Attention is energy.

Destiny, or Fate, and Free Will both exist. Destiny is greatness; Free Will is the path we take to get there.

Love is all there is.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.

Quantum uncertainty means that all of the universe exists as every possibility until consciousness chooses what to create and observe.

Love; thy neighbor is thyself.

Confusion once say, "What?"

Believing is seeing.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.

OK, here's a nostalgia question: What childhood game does this remind you of?

''Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick.''

If you answered, ''Spin the Bottle,'' then I frankly do not want to know any more about your childhood.

Don't quote me on that.

Can you remember a time when it wasn't now?

For if I write only for myself, my words can only change myself. But perhaps if I write for the world…

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was "but we've always done it this way." A million dead people can't have been wrong, can they?

WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MEN?

The Death of Rats looked up from the feast of potato. SQUEAK, he said.

Death waved a hand dismissively. WELL, YES, OBVIOUSLY ME, he said. I JUST WONDERED IF THERE WAS ANYONE ELSE.

"Let's just say that if complete and utter chaos was lightning, he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards'."

"There's nothin' wrong with bein' a son of a bitch."

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.

"Oh, all right. Of course I accept as a natural born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster and totally untrustworthy perverted genius."

"Capital! Welcome to government service!" said Lord Vetinari, "I pride myself on being able to pick the right man."

"I will teach you to deal with time as you would deal with a coat, to be worn when necessary and discarded when not."

"Will I have to wash it?" said Clodpool.

Wen gave him a long, slow look. "That was either a very complex piece of thinking on your part, Clodpool, or you were just trying to overextend a metaphor in a rather stupid way. Which do you think it was?"

There are no ordinary moments.

"You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death."

"But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you."

Americans don't need a metaphor for war. We have war. If anything, we use war as a metaphor for sports.

You know the old saying: "History is written by the winners. And also, the team of hand-picked historians that the winner keeps hidden away in an underground bunker."

I have an unfortunate compulsion. I really would rather not do it, as it is very nerve-wracking and un-fun. But when it works, there is nothing like it.

Lies are just another kind of storytelling, but with the very distinct and enlivening motive of desperation. Since writers are by nature desperate creatures, they usually do a pretty good (or pretty awful, but always interesting) job of lying.

A "story" is something an author creates in order to generate interest in his novel from movie producers. For this reason, it is critical that the story can be described very quickly, preferably in one sentence of no more than 16 words. For example:

"John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald meet in hell and team up to assassinate Satan."

I will start a program of low-budget space exploration that will involve two key elements: (1) A catapult, and (2) Hummer owners.

I would take just one vacation per year, but it would basically last for that entire year.

There is a difference between something being essential, and it being necessary. If you take your favorite book and strip it down to what is merely essential to tell the story, it would be butchery. The end result would horrify you. Essential is the bones of the story, but the soul lives somewhere else.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience.

You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.

If you think reading a book is hard, you should try writing one. Because it’s even harder. It’s still not as hard as writing a game, though. If you discount the purely visual pop-up parts, a book is made almost entirely of words. As a novelist, you just need to think of a few decent strings of words and then fill the other 98% of the book with more or less random descriptions of things and exclamation points.

In defense of games, I want to point out that the writing in plays, including everything by August Strindberg and The Lion King, is 100% pure crap. So we’re doing better than they are even though they have the benefit of mostly not being about space marines.

After Psychonauts went on to be very, very popular in Europe, I got busy with my next big project: being unemployed.

You sit in a room with someone, and you expend a lot of energy thinking of ways to postpone doing any work. After a while, you start saying the vilest, most offensive things you can think of in a desperate attempt to crack the other guy up. This sort of greases the wheels for eventually writing a line or two of usable dialog.

Sometimes an old idea gets relegated to the back of the line in the mad delight of a new idea, one you've never had before, and that you write fast in the thrill of the new. No rules. Just stories, and you tell as many of them as you can.

While often nothing the players do makes any sense at all within the context of the gameworld, you can be sure they will fixate on any and all flaws in the thinking on the part of NPCs.

“Plot” is what the DM does to amuse himself when the players aren’t talking.

The consequences you impose on your players for poor choices should be directly proportional to how much those choices annoyed you at the time.

Don’t worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can’t help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you’ll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don’t worry about whether you’re "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

Don’t be ashamed of the creative urges which drive you. And certainly don’t be ashamed of your ego. Hubris is only hubris when it fails. When Hubris pays off, we call these people geniuses.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. (Or, for that matter, as true.) Proof of which maxim is the fact that I just made it up.

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

One of the most difficult tasks people can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.

I usually congratulate people when they tell me, "I don't know who I am anymore."

When you let go of the thought that you should or need to know who you are, what happens to confusion? Suddenly it is gone. When you fully accept that you don't know, you actually enter a state of peace and clarity that is closer to who you truly are than thought could ever be. Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

All games inherently teach.

In other words, with games, learning is the drug.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device.

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

The truth is that there is no journey. You are right now what you are attempting to be. You are right now where you are attempting to go.

It is the master who knows this, and thus ends the struggle.

In form, you are and will always be inferior to some, superior to others. In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.

But that doesn't mean I don't hate my job sometimes.

It doesn't matter what you do for a living. Ron Jeremy probably calls in sick some days because he just can't stand the thought of getting another blowjob. I don't doubt that Mike and Jerry over at Penny Arcade occasionally wake up in the morning and think, "Fuck, I've got to play more fucking video games today."

God is not He who is, but That which is.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre group, they'll screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a good group, they'll fix it. Or they'll throw it away and come up with something else.