Latest Ian Bogost Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Looking for meaning in the ordinary seems like the most urgent thing that we can do.

  Ian Bogost

  Ordinary, Can Do, Urgent

  Source: app.longform.org

• To me, being able to find gratification in more venues, rather than greater gratification in a few, seems like a much more sane way of living.

  Ian Bogost

  Able, Way, Venues

  Source: app.longform.org

• We know exactly where the path to despair and insanity lies. It's in that sense that life is meaningless, there's nothing about today that's worth doing because it's just like yesterday and it's going to be just like tomorrow.

  Ian Bogost

  Lying, Yesterday, Insanity

  Source: app.longform.org

• If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you're able to find them in more places.

  Ian Bogost

  Able, Start The Day, Revelations

  Source: app.longform.org

• No one wakes up and says, "Yay I get to mow the lawn!" But if I can find meaning there, then there's nowhere I can't find meaning.

  Ian Bogost

  Yay, Wake Up, Lawns

  Source: app.longform.org

• God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today.

  Ian Bogost

  Today, Speak, Lawns

  Source: app.longform.org

• It's helpful to be prepared to celebrate the tiny things that you can do, where you meet the world and you negotiate an outcome that's quite tiny. But you can still make it feel remarkable.

  Ian Bogost

  Tiny Things, World, Outcomes

  Source: app.longform.org

• We're stuck in these situations with other people and our stuff and our jobs, and thinking that we can extract ourselves from those seems doomed to me. Instead, how can we live within those systems of constraints? We don't have to enjoy them, exactly, but at least acknowledge that those boundaries are real and that they structure our response to the world. And then once you do that, you allow yourself to say "I did my best given the circumstances."

  Ian Bogost

  Jobs, Real, Thinking

  Source: app.longform.org

• The actual effort that you can exert upon the universe is fairly limited.

  Ian Bogost

  Effort, Universe

  Source: app.longform.org

• We don't like to think of ourselves as subject to the forces of the world, we like to think of ourselves as exerting that force.

  Ian Bogost

  Thinking, World, Force

  Source: app.longform.org

• I think a lot of the misery that people experience comes from that sensation of boundlessness, of infinite possibility.

  Ian Bogost

  Thinking, People, Misery

  Source: app.longform.org

• The universe is not particularly concerned with you.

  Ian Bogost

  Concerned, Universe

  Source: app.longform.org

• There's just an enormous vast universe of possible intrigue out there and why not pay attention to it? Because then you're not burdened with trying to find that meaning in yourself all the time.

  Ian Bogost

  Trying, Attention, Why Not

  Source: app.longform.org

• We have been trained to think we have enormous power over the world. Whatever you dream, you can do. Anything can be bent to your will. But actually isn't it much more interesting to imagine that you're quite small?

  Ian Bogost

  Dream, Thinking, Interesting

  Source: app.longform.org

• There are personality traits, or baggage from their backgrounds, goals that they have and the first thing I need to do is understand and then acknowledge and then accept those properties. That's kind of the baseline requirement to have a productive relationship.

  Ian Bogost

  Goal, Personality, Needs

  Source: app.longform.org

• Forcing your spouse to stop doing that bad habit that drives you crazy, or making your kid be better at math or at art or at swimming, or making your parents or your in-laws not be annoying in the way that they're annoying, these are sometimes doomed goals.

  Ian Bogost

  Art, Crazy, Kids

  Source: app.longform.org

• There are also many things my wife can't stand about me, and there are certain capacities that she has that are different than mine. The trick is to find compatibilities.

  Ian Bogost

  Wife, Different, Capacity

  Source: app.longform.org

• My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.

  Ian Bogost

  Wife, Kitchen, Desire

  Source: app.longform.org

• The idea of thinking of our relationships with people as also being structured by limitations and constraints can be useful.

  Ian Bogost

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  Source: app.longform.org

• This willingness to be frank and plain about the way that the world is, is a good first step. But that doesn't mean that you get what you want.

  Ian Bogost

  Mean, World, Want

  Source: app.longform.org

• My lawnmower can't change in the way that my son can or that I can.

  Ian Bogost

  Son, Way, Can't Change

  Source: app.longform.org

• There are things about us that make us who we are, personality traits, or capacities that we have, or knowledge we possess or that we don't possess, habits we have that are good or bad.

  Ian Bogost

  Personality, Who We Are, Habit

  Source: app.longform.org

• Normally if you're dating, you're looking for compatibility, and then the moment that there's incompatibility, you're like, "Well, swipe left on that, let's just keep looking." In some ways I think the same lessons apply to people that apply to objects. It's just much easier to see that lesson in things because they're these fixed intangible lumps of stuff. People are not. They can change.

  Ian Bogost

  Thinking, People, Dating

  Source: app.longform.org

• Wouldn't we all rather have the possibility of finding pleasure and delight in literally anything we might encounter? Instead of assuming that actually there are only these three things where pleasure and delight are possible. Like oh, it's television and socialization and work, and then everything else is the smoke I have to somehow choke my way through in order to get to the good parts.

  Ian Bogost

  Order, Encounters, Three

  Source: app.longform.org

• Once you get yourself on that path where you're willing to find something delightful in laundry and in dishwashers, it means that you train yourself to be able to find it almost anywhere in almost anything.

  Ian Bogost

  Mean, Able, Path

  Source: app.longform.org