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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“When do you think you stop?” I ask. “When you’re forty? When they die?” I shoot him a teasing look. “When you win a Pulitzer?” He scoffs quietly. “No, not then. Because then, suddenly, they’re incredibly proud, but they’re proud of the accomplishment, not of the work. So you feel like you have to keep accomplishing instead of just creating. It affirms the idea that the value in what you do is how people react to it, and not just in the making of it. I’ve written stuff I’m really proud of that hardly anyone read. I’ve written stuff I’m proud of that no one liked. That doesn’t mean it didn’t deserve to be written.” Now I’m genuinely smiling, my mood lifting almost instantly. “That’s a nice thought.” His huge shoulders lift in a shrug. “It’s true. How many of your favorite shows got canceled? How many of the best albums barely sold when they came out? I mean, It’s a Wonderful Life was a box office flop in its time. If everyone who worked on that movie had known, could see how things were going to pan out in the short term, would they have even bothered to make it? And then the world would’ve lost out on something beautiful. Just because something doesn’t make money or win awards doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. Or doesn’t deserve to exist. The job is alchemy. You take a hunk of rock and you try to turn it into gold, and the gold isn’t even really the point.” “Right, because the goal is immortality,” I joke. “It’s permanence,” he says. “Not, like, having your name on the side of a fucking airplane or skyscraper, or some shit like that. But bringing something intangible into the world that can live on without you. Something bigger than the person who made it. And even then, the goal is secondary to the process. The process is for us. It changes us in ways that can’t be measured. At least, that’s what I’ve always thought.” My grin is getting bigger by the second.”

“When do you want to receive tribute, dead or alive? Without dispute, it is cute to pay tribute to the living. Destitute of words to salute good repute is no excuse. Our charity should begin with the living. Parents are a good starting point. We can't reciprocate by giving them life but we can at least impart quality and jollity to their lives by rendering them occasional tribute. If you have swallowed the pleasantries meant for your loved ones, please vomit them now to avoid the constipation of regret.”

“When doe something truly become popular? And I don't mean "popular" in the sense that it succeeds,: I mean popular in the sense that the specific thing's incontrovertible popularity is the most important thing about it. I mean "popular" in the way Pet Rocks were popular in 1975, or the way E.T. was popular in 1982, or the way Oprah Winfrey was popular for most of the nineties. The answer to this question is both obvious and depressing: Something becomes truly popular when it becomes interesting to those who don't particularly care. You don't create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who love movies. You create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who see one movie a year.”

“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others. Though we are often taught to think of ourselves as inherently selfish, the longing to act meaningfully in our work seems just as stubborn a part of our make-up as our appetite for status or money. It is because we are meaning-focused animals rather than simply materialistic ones that we can reasonably contemplate surrendering security for a career helping to bring drinking water to rural Malawi or might quit a job in consumer goods for one in cardiac nursing, aware that when it comes to improving the human condition a well-controlled defibrillator has the edge over even the finest biscuit. But we should be wary of restricting the idea of meaningful work too tightly, of focusing only on the doctors, the nuns of Kolkata or the Old Masters. There can be less exalted ways to contribute to the furtherance of the collective good.... ....An endeavor endowed with meaning may appear meaningful only when it proceeds briskly in the hands of a restricted number of actors and therefore where particular workers can make an imaginative connection between what they have done with their working days and their impact upon others.”

“When does a session of The Theatre of the Oppressed end? Never - since the objective is not to close a cycle, to generate a catharsis, or to end a development. On the contrary, its objective is to encourage autonomous activity, to set a process in motion, to stimulate transformative creativity, to change spectators into protagonists. And it is precisely for these reasons that the Theatre of the Oppressed should be the initiator of changes the culmination of which is not the aesthetic phenomenon but real life.”

“When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water failing on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear.”

“When does Purusharth (real spiritual effort to progress as the Self) arise? It begins after the Gnani Purush (enlightened One) makes you a Purush (the Self). Until then the efforts that are going on are subject to the prakruti (non-Self complex), one dances according to the tunes of the prakruti, and yet we have to accept it. That is bhrant purusharth (illusory effort).”

“When does this happen! What about your conscious mind, your brain, which shows you the truth at its own whims, ignores the data of the senses as it wants, and interprets it as it wants, enslaves you, colonizes you, marginalizes yourself and your truth, to survive in the body and enjoy. -How does he do it? Do you need me to tell you? After we agreed, my friend, that physical and psychological torment makes you imagine things that do not exist, contrary to the truth, and who is the one who controls the transmission of nerve signals for pain? Who controls the hormones and secretion of those that control your psychological state? Who is capable of subjecting you to the worst kinds of physical and psychological torment, to make you think that the bird is a leaf, who has the full power to do this to you? If I had a description then, it would not be more accurate than the weapon of your subconscious mind, with which it fights that devil in your head, its way to answer, find me, arrange my whole life, so that it can transcend your brain’s control over you.”