“There is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play;...” — Alan Watts Quote

“There is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't have to continue; there is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, gestures gesturing. If there is any problem at all it is to find out how people come to think there is a problem, whatever made them imagine that life is serious. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, multiplicity are all complications of it. Pain and suffering are very far-out forms of play, and there just isn't anything at all to be afraid of. There isn't any ego. The ego is a kind of flip, knowing that you know — like being afraid of being afraid. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to things, a sort of double take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.”

“But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.”

“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”

“Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.”

“So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.”

“Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.”

“The past was a small notebook, much scribbled-upon, that I had somehow mislaid.”

“We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.”

“However, it would take several days before Ana Magdalena became aware that the changes were not to the world but to herself. She had always gone through life without looking at it.”

“We’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans, yet practically no time at all to put them into action.”

“Mostly what you lose with time, in memory, is the specificity of things, their exact sequence. It all runs together, becomes a watery soup. Portmanteau days, imploded years. Like a bad actor, memory always goes for effect, abjuring motivation, consistency, good sense.”