[W]hen you go through life … it all seems accidental at the time it is happening. Then when you get on in your 60s or 70s and look back, your life looks like a well-planned novel with a coherent theme … Incidents that seemed accidental, pure chance, turn out to be major elements in the structuring of this novel. Schopenhauer says, ‘Who wrote this novel? You did.’

All of them bending themselves to listen though, ‘Pray heaven that the inside of my mind not be exposed,’ for each thought, ‘The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all.’

A man is but a product of his thoughts; what he thinks, that he becomes.

The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.