“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.Look around you - there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear.”
“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”
“When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.”
“ And no matter where you are right now, you can come on out and stand in the middle of it as the sun is going down, and you can know that right in the spot where you are standing, there used to be someone else, that at some other point in time, someone stood where you are standing, thinking their own thoughts. And someday in the future someone will stand there and wonder about you, wonder if there was ever anybody else. Keep in mind that you are making memories. Consider that something you take for granted today may be the one thing you might pine for someday, and there might not be any more of it left, but you'll remember its sweetness. Remember the curve of the sun in your bedroom window late in the day, the way your little brother's hair smelled after his bath, and the sound of your mother and father talking in the kitchen. Make sure you notice if the trees meet in an arch over your street, or if there's a certain sound that you hear at a particular time every day. Take note of those people who are so familiar to you, and consider memorizing them for a time when they are gone. And know that if anyone ever says to you, "What will you always remember about this place?" you will know just exactly which story it is that you would tell them.”
“When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.”
“You must have the courage to face what happened today and to live with it in your heart and to use the memory of it to grow and be strong.”