I've seen the truth, and it makes no sense.
When you make the finding yourself - even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light - you'll never forget it.
There's so much information on the internet. But people don't need more information, they need 'aha moments,' they need awareness, they need things that actually shift and change them.
An idea or an insight doesn't come from a single happening, it requires a meeting to alter a perspective. Often it takes a while for the events to collide, but when they do it is inevitable that a change will follow.
Most of the time we do not know what we have learned till long after we learned it.
That's how you write novels actually. You suddenly hit upon something and you realize this is the path you were meant to take. You'd be a fool if you didn't follow it. Perhaps it's like solving a difficult question in pure mathematics. There must be a moment when the solution is so simple and evident that you wonder why you hadn't come upon it before. When you do come upon it, you know it in the deepest part of your being. It carries its own logic.
My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the 'Origin', was, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!'
Have you ever had that moment when you looked back on something and said, 'Well, gosh, that seems obvious now... why didn't I see it then?' I like to call this the Face Palm Epiphany. Oh, hindsight, you magical, humbling thing.
For a scientist, it is a unique experience to live through a period in which his field of endeavour comes to bloom - to be witness to those rare moments when the dawn of understanding finally descends upon what appeared to be confusion only a while ago - to listen to the sound of darkness crumbling.
Clarity is the counterbalance of profound thoughts.
There's always that moment when you realize what it's going to be. You might have an overarching theme and you need to fill in the blanks - and then there's this "Aha" moment when you see where it's going. That's the most satisfying part of writing.
To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.
Learning is finding out what you already know.
I once gave a character in a novel my inability to get past the same point in any work of philosophy: that moment when seeing is suddenly occluded and you know you can go no further.
you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.
When the mind grapples with a great and intricate problem, it makes its advances step by step, with but little realization of the gains it has made, until suddenly, with an effect of abrupt illumination, it realizes its victory.
