Ken Wilber Quotes

I love books that create worlds for me that I don't want to leave. I recently lost my entire life to Haruki Murakami - 1Q84. I tell people that book ruined my life in the best possible way. I couldn't think of anything else for weeks after I read it.

I don't think anyone likes anything of mine. At the end of the day, I love it, but just because I love it... I happen to love broccoli, not a lot of people like broccoli. I always question if somebody else is going to love my films.

The Bible give us a list of human stories on both sides of the ledger. On list of human stories is used examples - do what these people did. Another list of human stories is used as warnings - don't do what these people did. So if your story ever gets in one of these books, make sure they use it as an example, not a warning.

I doubt about myself. I think doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things-arrogance or not intelligence.

The author creates a book and the people accept or not accept it. The creator of a book is an author and the creator of it's fate are people.

Woe to these people who have no appetite for the very dish that their age serves up.

Make sure you're doing impressions of people that are still relevant, and that everyone knows. Red Skelton impressions are a little outdated.

Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

I've written one book-length piece of journalism. The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? That book had an impact. Eight years after it was published it's still having an impact in Guatemala. I remember when I wrote it, a surprising number of people said things to me like, "That is such an amazing story; why didn't you turn it into a novel?"

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

I'm really excited that people are receiving my performance like this. It makes me feel good, because I've been working really hard. And this character [Idi Amin], I worked particularly hard on. But I don't want to get too caught up in it, because first of all, it could lead to a great disappointment. You never know what's going to happen.

Basically, I'm a perpetual student. I start by finding a subject I really don't know very much, but that I'm curious about. I learn about it through books in a library, by doing interviews with people who know a lot about the subject, and by going out on my own and seeing for myself what's happening.

They are either people of faith who have lost their faith from reading my books, or they are people who had already lost their faith, and something about my books encouraged them to affirm that.

Time is a function of impact. The longer a book of mine has been in print, the greater its impact seems to be as people absorb and digest my ideas. I am especially proud of The Change Master: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation, first published in 1983, because it raised questions and addressed issues at a time when so many great changes were occurring in our society, indeed throughout the world.

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.

Now, almost twenty years since my last job in book publishing, I know that there are far more socially inept people in book than in magazine publishing. At the time, however, I just didn't feel I was enough: smart enough, savvy enough, well read enough, educated enough, charming enough. Much of this was probably because I was very naive, and didn't really know how to behave in an office. This made me a terrible assistant, which in turn made me a terrible junior book editor.

He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.

If people don't read, that's their choice; a lifelong book habit may itself be some sort of affliction.

So I'm back again to the eternal question, the one that has plagued me all my life: How Do Other People Do It? How come they were given life's rule book and I missed out? Where was I when God was dispensing capability and cop on? Looking at shoes, probably.

People come to my shows and know that they're going to hear about what's going on in the world - what's happening at the moment. My material is as new as anything on the dinner table.

I calmed myself by walking into my nearby bookstore and marveling at all the books other people had written. So many people had finished and published novels; it couldn’t be so hard, right?

I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.

We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.