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Being a reader has brought me much joy, laughter, and rich experience. But reading has also wounded me. The sacrament of reading has plowed me open and sown seeds of empathy that have taken root in deep soil. Over the years, reading has caused me to grow from a shallow, self-absorbed youth to one who seeks out the pain of the world. Reading has burdened me with the welfare of my fellow human, but sometimes the burden proves too heavy for my narrow shoulders. ↗
In its quest to discover how the patterns of reality are organised, the story of modern science hints at a picture of a set of Chinese puzzle boxes, each one more intricately structured and wondrous than the last. Every time the final box appears to have been reached, a key has been found which has opened up another, revealing a new universe even more breathtakingly improbable in its conception. We are now forced to suspect that, for human reason, there is no last box, that in some deeply mysterious, virtually unfathomable, self-reflective way, every time we open a still smaller box, we are actually being brought closer to the box with which we started, the box which contains our own conscious experience of the world. This is why no theory of knowledge, no epistemology, can ever escape being consumed by its own self-generated paradoxes. And this is why we must consider the universe to be irredeemably mystical. ↗
Buffett's methodology was straightforward, and in that sense 'simple.' It was not simple in the sense of being easy to execute. Valuing companies such as Coca-Cola took a wisdom forged by years of experience; even then, there was a highly subjective element. A Berkshire stockholder once complained that there were no more franchises like Coca-Cola left. Munger tartly rebuked him. 'Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well two or three times, will make your family rich for life? ↗
Contemporaries relate that hearing Martin Luther pray was "an experience in theology". They said the reformer began praying with such humility that he could be pitied, only to proceed with such boldness before God that the human hearer would fear for him. ↗
I've certainly experienced racism, but it has not made a great impact on me. I have always thought, as I got older and older, I was more in charge of who I was. What someone thought about me or said about me made less of an impression on me at very vulnerable times. ↗
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Almost everyone can remember losing his or her virginity, and most writers can remember the first book he/she walked away from thinking, "I can do better that this. Hell, I am doing better than this!" What could be more encouraging to the struggling writer than to realize that his/her work is unquestionably better than that of someone who actually got paid for his/her stuff? Good writing on the other hand, teaches the learning writer about style, graceful narration, plot development, the creation of believable characters, and truth-telling. A novel like The Grapes of Wrath may fill a new writer with feelings of despair and good old-fashioned jealousy--"I'll never be able to write anything that good, not if I live to be a thousand"--but such feelings can also serve as a spur, goading the writer to work harder and aim higher. Being swept away by a combination of great story and great writing--of being flattened, in fact--is part of every writer's necessary formation. You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. So we read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles. ↗
