All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

Humanity does not ask to be happy.It merely asks us to be brilliant on its behalf. Survival first, and then happiness as we can manage it... Take what pleasure you can in the interstices of your work, , but your work is first, learning first, winning is everything because without it there is nothing.

Peter, you're twelve years old. I'm ten. They have a word for people our age. They call us children and they treat us like mice.

We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.

Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.

It is a common trait of primates to become submissive and even worshipful toward one who has the power to kill them.