kai’s most recent Quotables

A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

I know older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all 'crazy.' I have a suspicion — and hear me out, because this is a rough one — that the definition of “crazy” in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*** her anymore.

Blind rage cannot understand anything as complex or beautiful as Rome, or a library, or even a person, an animal, a book, a tree, a work of art—but blind rage can make these intricate systems stop, and the ability to make things stop has served many of our kind since time immemorial as a fine substitute for learning, experience, scientific method, artistic creation, philosophy.

“She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.”

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.

Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Kids can spot a moral coming from a mile off.

Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would I'd never leave.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.