Joko Beck Quotes

There is nothing for granted in life. That's how it is.

...our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

One thing you can rely on is that there will always be uncertainty.

I'm never in the same place for more than, like, three days at a time. Things can change from one minute to the next.

Life doesn't come in plot points or setups and payoffs. Life washes over you and passes.

Certainty in politics is never a given.

Everything changes with time. You can't predict where you're gonna be next year; you have no idea, you know what I mean?

The only real things in life is the unexpected things. Everything else is just an illusion.

Sometimes you think things are going to be forever, and then... of course, they're not.

I do have in the back of my head that you never know how long it lasts.

Nothing is ever certain.

All the ways of this world are as fickle and unstable as a sudden storm at sea.

Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject, and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment.

May I ask you something?" I say. "Why do you read books, when you could be outside, living a million different adventures every day?" "Because you can always count on a book to stay the same. EVerything else changes when you least expect it," she replies, bitter. "Families split apart, and nothing's forever. In books, you always know what's coming next. There are no surprises.

There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world.

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition.

It is not certain that everything is uncertain.

Even money, which shines so much, spits sometimes.

Thinking that everything is going to come together in a perfect way is not necessarily the way it's going to happen.

Life does not seem to present itself to me for my convenience, to box itself up nicely so I can write about it with wisdom and a point to make before putting it on a shelf somewhere.

Life isn't a book. There's no guarantee of a happy ending.

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.

Nothing is certain, ma petite, not even death." - Jean-Claude

Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest.