...the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad.

Do not underestimate objects.

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

I believe I want adult sanity, which seems to me the only unalloyed form of heroism available today.

It's like a fugue of evaded responsibility.

He suddenly felt nothing, or rather Nothing, a pre-tornadic stillness of zero sensation, as if he were the very space he occupied.

How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.