What is the difference between failure and defeat? Failure always feels like our own fault, not just to live up to earlier promise but when we fail to make the grade. We fail an exam, are not defeated by it. We are always defeated by something, even by bad luck...We should also acknowledge the lure of defeat compared to with the steady drip of discouragement: the knowledge gained by the defeated compared to the slow erosion and eventual withdrawal of te terminally discouraged.

It's not only the ability to create; the capacity to appreciate also needs to be nurtured, sustained, and celebrated so that one does not become reduced to and defined by aversion, indifference, or hostility.

That's the thing about the process of knowledge absorption as you get older. You can't get it all on one plate, in a single helping. You have to read about the same events, slog through the same subjects, in multiple whoppers...Knowledge in the brain in overlapping and criss-crossed layers...Everything has gradually to become a kind of sediment in the brain, its ocean floor—a place so dark and mysterious that the fish aren't really fish, just creatures without brains or eyes, flattened by dead weight of water knowledge pressing down on them.