How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head?

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense

Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.

Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.

Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

Can anyone alter fate? All of us combined... or one great figure... or someone strategically placed, who happens to be in the right spot. Chance. Accident. And our lives, our world, hanging on it.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.