For me, what fun means is finding novelty in the suffocating familiarity of ordinary life.

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.

To me, being able to find gratification in more venues, rather than greater gratification in a few, seems like a much more sane way of living.

We know exactly where the path to despair and insanity lies. It's in that sense that life is meaningless, there's nothing about today that's worth doing because it's just like yesterday and it's going to be just like tomorrow.

If you stop someone who's talking about something being fun, and say "Well what do you mean?" it's almost impossible to answer.

This willingness to be frank and plain about the way that the world is, is a good first step. But that doesn't mean that you get what you want.

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.