We have to always spread sugar on top of it in order that we can tolerate swallowing the things we're supposed to do, which is an incredibly depressing way of thinking about living your life. Not just that your work or your home life would be so miserable that you have to slather sugar on it, but then the sugar is all you're tasting. If that's the only way that I'm finding meaning, then we have this sort of mental diabetes that we're descending into.

If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you're able to find them in more places.

Play isn't you being clever, or finding a trick, or finding a way of covering over your own misery, or persuading someone to do what you want. It's the process of working with the materials that you find and discovering what's possible with them.

The universe is not particularly concerned with you.

Forcing your spouse to stop doing that bad habit that drives you crazy, or making your kid be better at math or at art or at swimming, or making your parents or your in-laws not be annoying in the way that they're annoying, these are sometimes doomed goals.

We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force.

It's not even that finding laundry pleasurable or delightful should be our goal rather than finding television delightful. It's that both laundry and television can be delightful.