[Last Updated: 2025-02-13]

# in the markdown:
{% if page.update %}**[Last Updated: {{ page.update | date: "%Y-%m-%d" }}]**{% endif %}

$ cat .git/hooks/pre-commit
#!/bin/sh
# Contents of .git/hooks/pre-commit

# Set timezone to PST
export TZ='America/Los_Angeles'

git diff --cached --name-status | grep "^M" | while read a b; do
  # Use date command to get the date in PST and format it as YYYY-MM-DD
  update_date=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d")
  cat $b | sed "/^---.*/,/^---.*/s/^update:.*$/update: $update_date/" > tmp
  mv tmp $b
  git add $b
done

This is a diary of some of my favorite quotes from books, movies, TV shows and various other sources.

The ones annotated with a are some of my choicest picks!

Literature

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Exhalation is a collection of sci-fi short stories by one of the most popular contemporary sci-fi author Ted Chiang. Recently, I also read his other short story work - Stories of Your Life and Others - which was absolutely mind-blowing. Below is a collection of my favorite quotes from the stories in Exhalation:

Coincidence and intention are two sides of a tapestry, my lord. You may find one more agreeable to look at, but you cannot say that one is true and the other is false.

Grief owes no debt.

Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.

~ Merchant and the Alchemists Gate

”Forgive and forget” goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that is all you need. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions isn’t so straightforward. In most cases, we have to forget a little bit before we can forgive; when we no longer experience the pain as fresh, the insult is easier to forgive, which in turn makes it less memorable, and so on. It’s this psychological feedback loop that makes initially infuriating offenses seem pardonable in the mirror of hindsight.
~ The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I’m glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.
~ Exhalation

The titular story is a phenomenal and quite literal take on introspection.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

This is a short novella in itself that so profoundly covers both the technological as well as more philosophical challenges in developing AI. Beautiful ideas that apply to AI and beyond.

[..]complex minds can’t develop on their own. If they could, feral children would be like any other. And minds don’t grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.

“You sometimes wish you don’t have [to] take care [of] me?”
She makes sure Jax is looking her in the face before she replies. “My life might be simpler if I didn’t have you to take care of, but it wouldn’t be as happy. I love you, Jax.”
“Love you too.”

In an era where we are letting AI take more and more control of our lives, this thought by Chiang is so much more relevant today than ever.

“Raising a child puts you in touch, deeply, inescapably, daily, with some pretty heady issues: What is love and how do we get ours? Why does the world contain evil and pain and loss? How can we discover dignity and tolerance? Who is in power and why? What’s the best way to resolve conflict? If we want to give an AI any major responsibilities, then it will need good answers to these questions. That’s not going to happen by loading the works of Kant into a computer’s memory; it’s going to require the equivalent of good parenting.”

[..]experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.

Every quality that made a person more valuable than a database was a product of experience.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

”Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”
~ Steve Hatch, Chapter 18

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

It is probably obvious that I’m currently obsessed with sci-fi! This is another collection of short stories by Hugo award winning author Ken Liu. While Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life and Others still remains by absolute favorite, there are quite a few stories in this one that struck a chord.

It has always been the regular state of things. There is no clarity, no relief. At the end of all rationality, there is simply the need to decide and the faith to live through, to endure.
~ The Regular

Harry Potter

It’s intriguing how a book series primarily intended towards teenagers and young adults has, imo, some of the most simple yet deeply profound ideas within it. As cliche (and perhaps a little controversial) as it may sound, I’d still recommend Harry Potter for anyone’s foray into the world of speculative fiction irrespective of age!

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Philosopher’s Stone

There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.
J.K. Rowling, The Philosopher’s Stone

^^This one will always tear me up a little and be super special as it is the moment when the golden trio is formed and what marks as the beginning of this epic friendship saga.

“[…]the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all – the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things which are worst for them.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Philosopher’s Stone

”It is not our abilities, Harry, that show what we truly are, it is our choices.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Chamber of Secrets

“Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Chamber of Secrets

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Goblet of Fire

“Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike”.~ Albus Dumbledore, The Order of the Phoenix

“Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young”.~ Albus Dumbledore, The Order of the Phoenix

”Of course it is happening inside your head Harry. But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Deathly Hallows

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”
~ Albus Dumbledore, The Deathly Hallows

“The dedication of this book is split seven ways: to Neil, to Jessica, to David, to Kenzie, to Di, to Anne, and to you, if you have stuck with Harry until the very end.~ J.K. Rowling, The Deathly Hallows

Movies and TV Shows

Where do I even begin! Perhaps the most widespread sources of wisdom for me have been movies and TV shows. I will keep adding to this list as and when I recollect.

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone. That’s why I read so much, Jon Snow.”
~ Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones S01E02 - “The Kingsroad”

Bran: “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
Ned: “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
~ Game of Thrones S01E01 - Winter is Coming

“You ever had a dream where you wake up one day and realize you’re just not tall enough to reach it? Well he ain’t woke up yet.”
~ Indira Olmstead, Fargo S05E05 - “The Tiger”

“At the end, all of life becomes an act of letting go.
~ Life of Pi.

The Good Place

tGP is such a phenomenally well made show. It is one of those few shows with an ending that can make grown men cry.

Janet: If there were an answer I could give you to how the universe works, it wouldn’t be special. It would just be machinery fulfilling its cosmic design. It would just be a big, dumb food processor. But since nothing seems to make sense, when you find something or someone that does, it’s euphoria. In all this randomness and this pandemonium, you and Chidi found each other, and you had a life together. Isn’t that remarkable?
Eleanor: I guess all I can do is embrace the pandemonium, find happiness in the unique insanity of being here, now.
~S03E12 - “Pandemonium”

Michael: Come on, you know how this works. You fail, and then you try something else, and you fail again, and again, and you fail a thousand times, and you keep trying, because… maybe the 1001st idea might work. Now, I’m gonna go and try to find our 1001st idea. I hope you’ll join me… I hope you shower first and then join me.
~S04E02 - “A Girl from Arizona Part 2”

Michael: If soulmates do exist, they’re not found, they’re made. People meet, they get a good feeling, and they get to work building a relationship.
S04E09 - “The Answer”

Chidi: Turns out life isn’t just a puzzle to be solved one time and it’s done. You wake up every day and you solve it again.
Michael: Terribly inefficient.
S04E09 - “The Answer”

Chidi: Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it’s there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave.
And then it crashes in the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it’s one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s supposed to be.
S04E13 - “Whenever You’re Ready”

Miscellaneous

This is just an assortment of quotes or ideas that I came across online or other miscellaneous sources (outside of books, movies or TV shows) that stayed with me.

In a world where we can choose to be anything let us choose to be kind.
~ Jennifer Dukes Lee

The world is a museum of passion projects.

The original quote is by J.C Incer but I came across it on Twitter. Such a simple yet profoundly powerful line, that to me, conveys hope and aspiration above all else.

Escape competition through authenticity. ~ Naval on Twitter

In my opinion, Naval quotes tend to have the most idea-to-n-gram ratio if you will. He has mastered the knack of distilling complex thoughts into powerfully concise words.

The reason why most conversations lack authenticity is that people mistake being vulnerable for being weak. We fear judgement and are terrified that someone might think less of us; what we don’t realize that people were never thinking of us to begin with and it was all in our head.

People in their 20s want to to get married because they have only seen weddings. People in their 30s don’t, because they have seen marriages. There is a huge difference between the party and the forever-after. (Credits to Rohan Joshi for this observation)

You can sum up your life in terms of wealth, job titles, authority, fame, love, faith and about a dozen other things. However, at the end of the day, the only metric that truly matters is that “you measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you”. (The Bucket List)

~ Rohan Kamath on Quora

Beautiful practical musings by Rohan Kamath (fellow Punekar!)

Only one who knows responsibility can handle freedom.

~ Nawazuddin Siddiqui. In his interview with Samdish.

The more you love yourself the more money you’ll attract.

~ Vidya Balan. In her interview with Samdish.

Contextually, this refers more to success or progress than money - which (imo) is just a vehicle in the quote to deliver the idea.

[People] don’t build trust by offering help, [they] build trust by asking for it.

~ Simon Sinek during his conversation with Trevor Noah.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn’t hear the music. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

perspective.

Below are some excerpts from Harsha Bhogle’s excellent Distinguished Alumni Lecture at IIM-A.

Don’t let what you cannot do come in the way of what you can.

Determination is far stronger than talent.

Attitude always trumps talent. Work Ethic does too. Talent is a very fleeting frame. Today you have it tomorrow you don’t.

Luck is being ready when opportunity presents itself.

Obsession with outcome is a trap. Accept that some days we will fail. Let the outcome be a meer by-product of skills and excellence.