For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

In memory, everything seems to happen to music.

I have this strange feeling that I’m not myself anymore. It’s hard to put into words, but I guess it’s like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.

I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story, for instance, lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the possibility that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave.

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

If you’ve already found that thing, then go do it with all your might. Pour your entire chocolate milkshake of a being into that tall soda glass.

A tiny hammer in my head is pounding on a drawer somewhere. I’m trying to remember something, something very important – but I don’t know what it is.

I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.’ Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’

Tinkering is what happens when you try something you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity.

When you tinker, there are no instructions — but there are also no failures, no right or wrong ways of doing things. It’s about figuring out how things work and reworking them.

Contraptions, machines, wildly mismatched objects working in harmony—this is the stuff of tinkering.

Tinkering is, at its most basic, a process that marries play and inquiry.