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.

Fun has to do with habitual activities but then also terrifically novel or unusual ones. It works as a sort of strange milkshake of those concepts.

The problem with fun is we really don't know what fun means at all.

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

If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you're able to find them in more places.

I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides.

Play is this process of operating the world, of manipulating things. It's related to experimentation, and it's related to pleasure, but not defined by it.

We have so many choices that it's only always our fault if we're malcontent.

It's not even that finding laundry pleasurable or delightful should be our goal rather than finding television delightful. It's that both laundry and television can be delightful.

The whole idea of play is in finding, acknowledging, and then working with the natural constraints and limitations that you find in the world.

There's just an enormous vast universe of possible intrigue out there and why not pay attention to it? Because then you're not burdened with trying to find that meaning in yourself all the time.

Come to think of it, she did not speak a word. Yet I could have sworn she had the most beautiful voice.

Thought leadership is first and foremost life leadership.

Forgive me again.” He lifts the carafe and refreshes his goblet. “What happened to those two children who laughed at dandelion fuzz?” he says softly. “Are they gone forever, do you think?

Children must be taught obedience just as much as they need to be taught to read and write.

Stab me if you can enjoy it - but not if it feels like a duty. Stab me vertically if I’m lying down and horizontally if I’m running

It may be a procession of faithful failures that enriches the soil of godly success.

I deal with foreign countries. I made a lot of money dealing against China. I've made a lot of money dealing against many other countries.

The critical image... must not only fail to capture its referent, but show its failure.

When novels deal in abstractions, they generally go off the rails.

Success breeds volume, and it's just amazing how many young writers, artists, and musicians there are in town.