the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.

For better or worse, our future will be determined in large part by our dreams and by the struggle to make them real.

Flow is being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz.

A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.

Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.

And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field.

If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity.

The task is to learn how to enjoy everyday life without diminishing other people's chances to enjoy theirs.

Flow is hard to achieve without effort. Flow is not 'wasting time.

Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it.

Entropy is the normal state of consciousness - a condition that is neither useful nor enjoyable.

I want to be born and reborn as a cherry tree so that I may beautify this world with my blossoms, feed everyone with my nectar of love fruits, and purify the air with my calmly dancing leaves.

But even then I knew how it was going to be, I could feel the coming silence in the long, poisonous pauses that expanded as the night progressed.

I do like that idea that music can work on two levels, and you only pick up on the second one after a few listens.

I am learning that a life isn't real unless someone else knows its reality. And I want my life to be real.

Je suis autant Chinois que Fran c° ais. I am as much Chinese as French.

I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have.

You really have to soak up the culture of the people to get it right. If you're making a fiction film, it's entertainment, but you want it to be as real as possible.

The main thing is not to be dead.

I don't want to be made to look like I'm 25. I'm 39. I don't have any issues with my age.

I spit into the face of time that has transfigured me