Quotes

Attention is energy.

Destiny, or Fate, and Free Will both exist. Destiny is enlightenment; 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, "Huh?"

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.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Never theorize before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

C.S. Lewis says somewhere that it's like asking how many minutes are in the color yellow. Everyone could be taking the question very seriously, discussing it, fighting about it. One person suggests there are twenty-five carrots in the color yellow, the other person says, "No, seventeen potatoes," and they're suddenly fighting. Not that, not that!

This is what is ultimate in our human knowledge of God, to know that we do not know.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you're living in an illusion. There's something seriously wrong with you. You're not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? "He is to blame, she is to blame. She's got to change." No! The world's all right. The one who has to change is you.

Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or you? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? When you bump your knee against a table, the table's fine. It's busy being what it was made to be—a table. The pain is in your knee, not in the table. The mystics keep trying to tell us that reality is all right. Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind.

Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with "me" and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don't have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you.

No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person. Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite. That's why you're in the mess you're in right now. That is why you're asleep. They never told you this. But it's self-evident.

Religion says: 'Be good and you will be happy,' but the adage is truer the other way round: 'Be happy and you will be good.'

The most notable aspect of a positive judgment is not that it is positive but that it is a judgment.

The notion of ever more old people needing ever more young people, who in turn will grow old and need ever more young people and so on, ad infinitum, is an obvious ecological Ponzi scheme.

Anyone who believes in indefinite growth of anything physical on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist.

A grade can be regarded only as an inadequate report of an inaccurate judgment by a biased and variable judge of the extent to which a student has attained an undefined level of mastery of an unknown proportion of an indefinite amount of material.

Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

In law, they teach you that if you can win on the law, argue the law. If you can’t win on the law, argue the facts. If you can’t win on the facts, argue policy. And if you can’t win on policy, attack the credibility of the witness.

There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.

It drives me crazy when you go and trash someone’s house and they act – I tend to imagine in Zelda that they’re not talking about it because they’re absolutely terrified of you. They think you’re some sort of complete psychopath that’s gonna kill them, you’re like a mobster or something and you’re smashing the place and they’re like, *whistles* and as soon as you leave they fall down on the ground and cry.

Institutions will try to preserve the problem for which they are the solution.

Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.

What method will be fast? What will take up the least memory? What will make for clear, readable code? These are questions that programmers love to ponder before coming up with the wrong answer and making a mess of things.

When someone who wields political power does something you dislike or disagree with, it’s incumbent upon you to object, criticize, and demand a different course. Those who refuse to do so are abdicating the most basic duty of citizenship and rendering themselves impotent.

If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?

IDEALLY, WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO COMMUNICATE TO BOTH THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU AND FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS SHOULD BE SOMETHING THAT EXISTS IN YOUR STORY. IT SHOULD BE THE VERY POINT OF YOUR STORY. IT SHOULD BE YOUR PURPOSE.

WHETHER OR NOT WE MEAN TO PUT MESSAGES IN OUR FILMS AND MEDIA, THEY ARE STILL THERE.

Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.

I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man."

How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence... while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

The way I talk to my closest friends would kill you if you heard it. You would die instantly. I don’t think this is uncommon, either: people are calibrated to their in-groups. My first thought on any subject would dissolve your flesh. The third thought would accrue in your lungs, negatively impacting respiration. My eleventh thought might be appropriate, might be, with four paragraphs of explanation. Most times when I open Twitter, I just close it again.

"He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular."

IF STORYTELLING IS REALLY THE BEST WAY TO PASS ON TRUTHS THAT HELP PEOPLE, THEN WHAT DOES IT SAY IF WE'RE PASSING ON UNHELPFUL, EGO-MASSAGING GARBAGE?

One is very rarely the first person to invent language like this; the Internet, specifically Google, can put any fantasies about language acumen to rest. You always have to try, though: that is our doom. We have a friend with multiple sclerosis, and when he was talking to his doctor about it, our friend told this doctor that one sclerosis was probably fine. There was a pause, during which the ambient temperature of the room dropped noticeably. Then, the doctor informed him that denizens of the medical profession have heard this joke in a single, steady, unbroken stream since the first hot light of our universe.

The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we’ve created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages.