Quotes of the week

 “When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that — then any time at all will be the right time for you.”
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

"For your first 39 years you're struggling up the steep slopes, heading for the top as fast as possible, not even looking around you, desperate to see what's on the other side. Finally you are at the summit and get a clear view of both ahead and behind.
You look back and you see a lush, fecund valley full of cavorting young people who wanted to be your friends, but ahead of you is a sheer cliff dropping into a stony, icy crevasse, littered with the bodies of the dead and dying. You want to turn around and do the climb again at a leisurely pace, but you are manhandled into a toboggan and sent whizzing down the slope. You might get thrown off at any point and die or get to the bottom and die. All that is certain is that you are going to die, soon, along with all the idiots who rushed to get over the hill only to find that the hill was what it was all about."
-Richard Herring

 "I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle."
-Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

 "Perception is never passive. We are not only receivers of the world, we also actively produce it."
-Siri Hustvedt