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" For me, a writer should be more like a lighthouse keeper, just out there by himself. He shouldn't get his ideas from other people all around him. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Me
More
People
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" If you run from technology, it will chase you. "
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" We do need a return to individual integrity, self-reliance, and old-fashioned gumption. We really do. "
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" Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions. "
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" It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
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" One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. Geometry is not true, it is advantageous. "
Robert M. Pirsig
True
Geometry
Cannot
" The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Up
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" The funny thing about insane people is that it is kind of the opposite of being a celebrity. Nobody envies you. "
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You
Funny
Kind
" When somebody goes outside the cultural norms, the culture has to protect itself. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Outside
Norms
Goes
" I did not want to write one of those sequels that famous first-book authors get into where everybody says, 'Oh yeah.' "
Robert M. Pirsig
Everybody
Famous
Where
" The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. "
Robert M. Pirsig
You
Bring
Find
" Even in the presence of others he was completely alone. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Presence
Even
Alone
" Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a thirty thousand page menu, and no food. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Thirty
Restaurant
Page
" The solutions all are simple - after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Know
You
Them
" Quality is the Buddha. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Buddha
Quality
" It's the dualistic ways of looking at things that produces the evil. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Things
Ways
Produces
" We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Moments
Keep
Little
" What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Skin
Soul
I Am
" The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Hands
World
Heart
" Up until my first book was published, I had all this potential, people would say, and I screwed up. After it, I could say: 'No, I didn't screw up.' "
Robert M. Pirsig
Say
Screwed
People
" To live for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Top
Future
Goal
" I have money, fame, a happy wife, our daughter Nell. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Wife
Fame
Daughter
" The Buddha resides as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Cycle
He
Top
" The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Peace
Art
Caring
" Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Know
You
Think
" The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Say
Door
Go
" Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organise themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? "
Robert M. Pirsig
Simple
Chemistry
Struggle
" There's no such thing as morality. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Morality
Thing
" I really don't mind dying because I figure I haven't wasted this life. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Wasted
Dying
Because
" It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Door
Go
Looking
" People are all at sixes and sevens with each other. They're always quarreling. They never somehow resolve anything. "
Robert M. Pirsig
Resolve
People
Always