“Speaking biologically, fruit in a slightly shriveled state is holding its respiration and energy consumption down to the lowest possible level. It is like a person in meditation: his metabolism, respiration, and calorie consumption reach an extremely low level. Even if he fasts, the energy within the body will be conserved. In the same way, when mandarin oranges grow wrinkled, when fruit shrivels, when vegetables wilt, they are in the state that will preserve their food value for the longest possible time.”

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.”

“Matter is energy plus information. You and I, our bodies are matter. Our minds depend on that. There is no part of mind that is not the flux of information and energy at the classical level. At the classical level matter of a certain density may not share space with other matter. You and I cannot cross over. But at the quantum level, all things may pass through each other. But passing through causes a change in states, a change of information. Every change brings loss, creates anomalies. Losses pile up. Anomalies grow. Forgetting occurs. Without the information being isolated from the process, how can what was be made to the same pattern? It is similar, but it is not the same. New organization is possible, but old patterns are gone forever. The longer you stay at quantum level, interacting with lower levels of organization, the more you lose. Perhaps it's better.”

“Here again, the difference between the effective and the virtual, between mourning and its possibility, seems fragile and porous. The anguished apprehension of mourning (without which the act of friendship would not spring forth in its very energy) insinuates itself a priori and anticipates itself; it haunts and plunges the friend, before mourning, into mourning. This apprehension weeps before the lamentation, it weeps death before death, and this is the very respiration of friendship, the extreme of its possibility. Hence surviving is at once the essence, the origin and the possibility, the condition of possibility of friendship; it is the grieved act of loving. This time of surviving thus gives the time of friendship.”

“He's dangerous, electric, impossible to contain. His body is rippling with an energy so extraordinary that even when he's calmed down it's almost palpable. It has a presence.”

“When you argue with someone, you always argue at the level of the person with the lowest level of intelligence. You never argue up.”