The Sixteen Pleasures

He doesn't believe in talking too much about art, especially while you're looking at it. The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spend their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever.

People say that God works in mysterious ways when they really mean that life, or something in their own lives, doesn’t make any sense, but I think that’s wrong. I think it means that we can’t make any sense out of life until we give up our deepest hopes, until we stop trying to arrange everything to suit us. But once we do, or are forced to . . . That’s what’s mysterious.

Death was a lens that would reveal things as they really were: what was important would assume its true importance; what was unimportant would recede into the shadows.

You won't know true happiness ... till you give up your heart's desire.

Nah," I said to myslef, crumpling up the note, "Non vale il pene".