Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.

We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.

Care about understanding and before you know it, in just a few decades, you'll have a system of thinking that gives you answers whenever you ask.

Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play.

There were times in my life when I said, "Oh God, I'm making a terrible, terrible mistake here." And on another level it looked as if that's exactly what I had done. All of us can look back across our lives and see what we thought was a disaster was actually a blessing - from a long-term perspective, it was a blessing. With practice, we can shorten the length of time between "what a dumb mistake I've made" and "what a brilliant choice that was.