"Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others presence"
"The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room"
"Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven't met, but I don't want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it's like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. "Here's your change." "Paper or plastic?' "Credit or debit?" "You want ketchup with that?" I don't want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to be ant, you know? "
Man on the Train: Hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley: Yeah.
Man on the Train: I haven't seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting
Celine: I've been thinking also about something you said.
Jesse: What's that?
Celine: Just about reincarnation and where all the new souls come through over time. Everybody says they have been the reincarnation of Cleopatra or Alexander The Great. I always want to tell them they were probably some dumb fuck like everybody else.
Accordion Player: And this is where I think language came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival, like water we came up with a sound for that
[... ]
Accordion Player: but when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. When I say love the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travel through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, through their memories of love, or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say, Yes they understand, but how do I know they understand? Because words are inert, they'r ejust symbols, they're dead. And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed, it's unspeakable. And yet, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we have connected, and we think we are understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think that's what we live for.
"What you do makes a difference. We should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are"