“I came to America with a passport and a valise full of dreams”
“Boxes of records made me think that LPs should be outlawed or at least limited to five per person, and I soon came to despise the type who packs even her empty shampoo bottles, figuring she’ll sort things out and throw them away once she’s settled into her new place.”
Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day
“Faith is clearly not enough for many people. They crave hard evidence, scientific proof. They long for the scientific seal of approval, but are unwilling to put up with the rigorous standards of evidence that impart credibility to that seal. What a relief it would be: doubt reliably abolished! Then the irksome burden of looking after ourselves would be lifted. We're worried - and for good reason - about what it means for the human future if we have only ourselves to rely upon.”
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Receive under your roof those who seek protection and know the exact time to send them away before they become puffed up and ready to bite the hand that fed them.”
Source: Book of Wisdom
“Values beat experience when experience doesn't work hard.”
Source: Bar Hacks: Developing The Fundamentals for an Epic Bar
“The art of hospitality is the genuine warmth and care that one person can show another. The science of hospitality is creating the conditions, the culture, the training, the physical spaces, and the psychological safety, where that art can flourish, consistently and at scale.”
Source: Hospitalicology: The Science of Great Hospitality
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
“...there were only fifteen thousand polar bears in the world, and five billion of me. To let one of them devour my all-too-common flesh would, if only slightly, help adjust the grievous imbalance.”
Source: Last Places: A Journey in the North
“I always feel myself being thrust back into loneliness when someone tells me it's cold on a hot day. It isn't good to talk so much about the weather — weather is a highly personal matter, and communication on the subject inevitably fails.”
Source: Memoirs of a Polar Bear
“Einstein's secretary once said that if Einstein were born among the polar bears, he would still be Einstein. But unless polar bears were well versed in theoretical physics, that is not true. Einstein would not be Einstein. Which is not to take anything away from Einstein, or the polar bears, but simply to point out that he was part of a creative ecology, and trying to isolate him from it is not only silly but futile.”
Source: The Geography of Genius: A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley