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That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

— Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Page 10)

Like Jordan Baker, people with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent.

— Slouching towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion (Page 124)

The truth, as one spiritual teacher puts it, is that reality doesn’t need me to help operate it. It carries on fine regardless.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 137)

You won’t feel like you know what you’re doing. But nobody ever does; that’s just how it is for finite humans, attempting new things. The main difference between those who accomplish great things anyway and those who don’t is that the former don’t mind not knowing. They were not less flawed or finite than you.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 135)

Perhaps most radically of all, what additional satisfaction could you take in your life, what fun could you have, once you glimpse a truth that must have come intuitively to premodern people, which is that since life is so inherently confusing and precarious, then joy, if it’s ever to be found at all, is going to have to be found now, in the midst of the confusion and precariousness?

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 131 - 132)

You can have a hundred tea ceremonies; you could even have all of them with the same people. But you can only have that ceremony, that cup of tea, once. Then that stretch of time evaporates forever. If it didn’t – if, in defiance of all logic, it somehow persisted, so that you could return to it whenever you liked, for as long as you liked – it would be vastly less precious. The transience is the whole point.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 127)

Knowing that I needn’t project a facade of flawless competence before I can start daunting work or reach out to others – because I understand that everyone else has a similarly messy inner world – leaves me far more likely to do so.

— Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Page 124)