You need to belong to yourself, and let others belong to themselves too. You need to be free and detached from things and your surroundings. You need to build your home in your own simple existence, not in friends, lovers, your career or material belongings, because these are things you will lose one day.

The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.

As I would soon learn myself, cleaning up what a parent leaves behind stirs up dust, both literal and metaphorical. It dredges up memories. You feel like you’re a kid again, poking around in your parents’ closet, only this time there’s no chance of getting in trouble, so you don’t have to be so sure that everything gets put back exactly where it was before you did your poking around. Still, you hope to find something, or maybe you fear finding something, that will completely change your conception of the parent you thought you knew.

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.

And when the earth began to rumble and quake, as fear and frantic set in, he ran back inside the house past his wife and children, gathering all the valuables and things he thought of importance, and ran back to his car packing away. After making two trips in and out, he waited in the car for his family to come out, in fear they darted through the darkness and pelting cold rain. When everything calmed down, and the house was intact and safe, he returned putting everything back in its place, had the kids go to bed, told his wife he loves her and turned off the light.

Either I shall find it, or I shall not find it. I examine my note-case. I look in all my pockets. These are the things that forever interrupt the process upon which I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this moment exactly.

Some thoughts are like old piece of belongings that need to be disposed to move on.

How safe and secure is the internet?Well.....Would you leave all your worldly belongings on the road and expect them to be there when you came back seven years later?

Whoever has the better stuff wins. Sound familiar, American lackeys of late-stage capitalism?

Communism in a capitalist world requires eliminating the hope of the citizens for owning what others own.

People come in my house and say, “I like this.” I say, “Do you want it?” Isn’t that the Christian thing to do?

I introduced Nora as my wife, though that was a lie. Old people, that's what they wanted to hear. If you were married, you were mature, reliable, exactly like them, because in their day men and women didn't just live together--they made a commitment, they had children and went on cruises and built big houses on lakes and filled them with all the precious trinkets and manufactured artifacts they'd collected along the way.