the dots connect somehow

I collect words, which is much easier to do now that I read most of my books on the iPad Kindle app. I want to rush out and buy hard covers of all of those books so I can pile them up around my house, but I appreciate the ease of having a handy collection of highlighted phrases that I can access anywhere. These contradictions are the summation of my life.

What’s caught my attention lately:

From Lisa Kudrow’s Vassar 2010 commencement address:

“I was weirdly confident…for no reason at all — but because this didn’t exactly feel like it was a choice as much as succumbing to a compulsion, and I didn’t analyze what led me to this point, whether it was divine intervention, or a lapse in judgment or sanity, I just listened to that inner voice.”

From what James Altucher learned from hulu hooping:

“The less movement the better… If it’s hard, it means it’s not going to happen. When you have the right company, it’s easy. Same for getting acquired. If it’s too difficult, then you are either in the wrong business or you need to build more.”

I think this is likely true in lots of circumstances other than business.

From Penn Jillete’s book God, No! (talking about spending money on renovations for his house that he’d never make back in resale value and worrying about scandalous pictures of him getting leaked):

“‘Accept who you are and do whatever you want.’ I found that when I stopped lying to myself and stopped planning for futures that weren’t going to happen, I got happier. It was easy. I liked that my door to the Supreme Court was slammed in my face.”

From an Esquire article quoting Roger Ebert:

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts.”

There’s something here I’m clearly still trying to puzzle out about important and necessary parts of selfishness, and friction, and “should” vs. “need”, and the unexpected paths our lives take.

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