Exhalation: Stories

men of experience say, “Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity,”

Because even if a universe’s life span is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not.

We don’t normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose thought processes are technologically mediated.

Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.

her eyes were as dark and beautiful as a gazelle’s.

We spoke for more than an hour, and my fascination and respect bloomed like a flower warmed by the dawn,

When we speak, we use the breath in our lungs to give our thoughts a physical form. The sounds we make are simultaneously our intentions and our life force.

if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.