The self is not something you can set out looking for; it reveals itself gradually through the choices you make.

We must cease to concern ourselves with our unique suffering – whether we are happy or sad, fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad – and give up our neurotic and debilitating journeys of self-discovery. Art of true value requires, like a j

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Thinly veiled insults (“Really?”/“That’s weird”/“…interesting”) are often compliments delivered by people who are at odds with themselves. Take them in stride.

Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman on making the most of your opportunities:

"This is something a teacher told me years ago, and he's right:

If you're auditioning for something that you know you're never going to get—or maybe you read the script and didn't even like it, but you still have to go—if you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has ... See more

Every “overnight success” is the result of years of thankless work. Success comes not from great acts of genius but from doing lots of small things consistently

Don’t take yourself seriously, but do take your work seriously. Do what you say you’re going to do. If you don’t, you’ll lose respect for yourself. And if you don’t respect yourself, you’ll find it effortless to trespass across your own boundaries and violate all that you value.

In our society, the spaces for adults to play are mostly constrained, for example, to sports, or going to the pub. And opportunities to live a life of imagination are reserved for exceptionally privileged people, like designers, actors, artists and film directors. This lack of imagination in our lives is an existential risk for society and humanity... See more

Aim to be effective, but unpredictable. That is, you want to act in a way that AIs have trouble modeling or imitating. That makes you irreplaceable.

If you think someone is normal, you don’t know them very well. Normalcy is a fiction. Your job is to discover their weird genius.

There are many kinds of value. Time, space, personal freedom. Monetary worth is only one. You choose what holds the most weight.