It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odduncanny and highly improbable. G.K.Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don't. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.

Cows scream louder than carrots.

Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.