“why can't we be more aware and conscious of all the things we already have rather than what we would like to have?”

“Discontentment shows up when we focus on what we can't have rather than what we do have.”

“How good life would be if we could all be more conscious of where things come from, if we could turn away from blind consumption and live with more awareness of the life around us.”

“The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us - these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road - aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and calls consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.”

“Books are all the dreams we would most like to have and like dreams they have the power to change consciousness. ”

“Why did things have to be so complicated with human beings?...Yet if we were not what we were, creatures with at least the awareness of purpose and honor, what would we be? Empty knights in armor, seeming so strong on the outside, yet hollow inside?”