Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for while others can get it without any effort at all.

I spent thirty-three years in another man's shadow. I went everywhere he went, I helped him with everything he did. I was in a sense a part of him. When you live like that for a long time, you gradually lose track of what it is you yourself really want out of life

Whenever I look at the ocean, I always want to talk to people, but when I'm talking to people, I always want to look at the ocean.

Was it Aristotle who said the human soul is composed of reason, will, and desire?” “No, that was Plato. Aristotle and Plato were as different as Mel Tormé and Bing Crosby. In any case, things were a lot simpler in the old days,” Komatsu said. “Wouldn’t it be fun to imagine reason, will, and desire engaged in a fierce debate around a table?

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.

The world is full of ways and means to waste time.

I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.