{"author":"Ruth Ozeki","author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki","total_quotes":47,"quotes":[{"text":"To study the self is to forget the self. Maybe if you sat enough zazen, your sense of being a solid, singular self would dissolve and you could forget about it. What a relief. You could just hang out happily as part of an open-ended quantum array.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["buddhism","japanese","life","meditation","physics","quantum-mechanics","science","sense-of-self","spirituality"],"id":9434,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"We're by-products of the mid-twentieth century', Oliver said. 'Who isn't?","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["history","identity","past"],"id":31849,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["culture","writing","people "],"id":40841,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"In your diary, you quoted old Jiko saying something about not-knowing, how not-knowing is the most intimate way, or did I just dream that?Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think maybe it's true, even though I don't really like uncertainty. I'd much rather 'know', but then again, not-knowing keeps all the possibilities open. It keeps all the worlds alive.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["future","life","not-knowing","possibilities","uncertainty"],"id":41341,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["old","spirit","tofu","trash","useless"],"id":51817,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"As I bathe myselfI pray with all beingsthat we can purify body and mindand clean ourselves inside and out.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["prayer"],"id":65311,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"Live. For Now. For the time being.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["life","live","time","wisdom"],"id":66215,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"Together we'll make magic...Who had conjured whom?She seemed to remember Oliver suggesting this once before, but she hadn't really appreciated the importance of his question. Was she the dream? Was Nao the one writing her into being? Agency is a tricky business, Muriel had said. Ruth had always felt substantial enough, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was as absent as her name indicated, a homeless and ghostly composite of words that the girl had assembled. She'd never had any cause to doubt her senses. Her empirical experience of herself, seemed trustworthy enough, but now in the dark, at four in the morning, she wasn't so sure.","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["existence","philosophy"],"id":77786,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal farther?","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["childhood","promise","sad","suicide"],"id":91703,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"},{"text":"How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?","author":"Ruth Ozeki","tags":["suicide","trust"],"id":97850,"author_id":"Ruth+Ozeki"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":47,"pages":5,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}