Light Years - pg. 35

But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: these are what life admires. Still anything can be endured if humanity is watching. The martyrs prove it. We live in the attention of others. We turn to it as flowers to the sun.
There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams… one must be unthinking, like a tortoise. One must be resolute, blind. For whatever we do do prevents us from doing the opposite. So that life is a matter of choices, each one final and of little consequence, like dropping stones into the sea.