twenty-eight years and a million words
Due to a combination of short-turns, I used a total of four streetcars to get home tonight. Why in hell would a streetcar east bound from the downtown turn off its route, dumping its passengers, as close to the city core as Parliament? And why does this happen at least once a week?
Is it the mayor's football team...
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.
—John Gardner