A fun movie is something that is pleasurable without being demanding, you don't have to think too hard.

Our ideas of happiness, gratification, contentment, satisfaction, all demand that those feelings come from within us. If you flip that on its head and say "What if I took the world at face value?" and then ask "What can I do with what is given?" it's an interesting trick to turn around the whole problem of how you feel.

Once you get yourself on that path where you're willing to find something delightful in laundry and in dishwashers, it means that you train yourself to be able to find it almost anywhere in almost anything.

Looking for meaning in the ordinary seems like the most urgent thing that we can do.

I think a lot of the misery that people experience comes from that sensation of boundlessness, of infinite possibility.

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.

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.