You don't have to be an academic. You don't have to be anything. Don't force it. Feel your way, and don't stop feeling your way until something fits. Maybe nothing will. Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road. But make sure it's one with something to look at out of the window.
If you have children and love one more than another, work at it. They will know, even if it's by a single atom less. A single atom is all you need to make a very big explosion.
To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunise yourself with art. And love.
When you watch the news and see members of your species in turmoil, do not think there is nothing you can do. But know it is not done by watching news.
Sometimes, to be yourself you have to forget yourself and become something else. Your character is not a fixed thing. You will sometimes have to move to keep up with it.
Humans are always doing things they don't like doing. In fact, to my best estimate, at any one time only point three percent of humans are actively doing something they like doing, and even when they do so, they feel an intense amount of guilt about it and are fervently promising themselves they'll be back doing something horrendously unpleasant very shortly.
[...] being human is being a young child on Christmas Day who receives and absolutely magnificent castle. And there is a perfect photograph of this castle on the box and you want more than anything to play with the castle and the knights and the princesses because it looks like such a perfect human world, but the only problem is that the castle isn't built. It's in tiny intricate pieces, and although there's a book of instructions you don't understand it. And nor can your parents or Aunt Sylvie. So you are just left, crying at the ideal castle on the box which no one would ever be able to build.
Past and future are myths. The past is just the present that has died and the future will never exists anyway, because by the time we get to it the future will have turned into the present. The present is all there is. The ever-moving, ever-changing present. And the present is fickle. It can only be caught by letting go.
The point of love is to help you survive. The point is also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning is to hold the hand of someone you care about and to live inside the present.
[...] this is the species whose main excuse for not doing something is 'if only I had more time'. Perfectly valid until you realise they do have more time. Not eternity, granted, but they have tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. In fact, I would have to write 'the day after' thirty thousand times before a final 'tomorrow' in order to illustrate the amount of time on a human's hands.
Some humans not only like violence, but crave it [...]. Not because they want pain, but because they already have pain and want to be distracted away from that kind of pain with a lesser kind.
[...] the whole of human history is full of people who tried against the odds. Some succeeded, most failed, but that hasn't stopped them. Whatever else you could say about these particular primates, they could be determined.
