The Style of the Soul

Every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavour of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle.  Every human soul has a style of its own.  Its one basic theme.  You'll see it reflected in every thought, in every act, every wish of that person.  The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature.  Years of studying won't show it to you.  His face will.  You'd have to write volumes to describe a person.  Think of his face.  You need nothing else.

Excerpt for Ayn Rand's the Fountainhead

Summer Reading List

Trying my best to spend less time on the computer and more time doing....well...anything else. The ten hours a day I spend working on one should be enough. So in the spirit of spending less time in front of the computer screen, here's my summer reading list.

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
The Giving Tree - Shel Silverstein
Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson

The Physics of the Quest

In the end, I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

Elizabeth Gilbert - Quotation from Eat, Pray, Love