“Many things in your life matter but only one thing matters absolutely. It matters whether you succeed or fail in the eyes of the world. It matters whether you are healthy or not healthy, whether you are educated or not educated. It matters whether you are rich or poor. It certainly makes a difference in your life. Yes, all these things matter, relatively speaking. But they don't matter absolutely. There is something that matters more than any of those things and that is finding the essence of who your are beyond that short-lived entity, that short-lived personalized sense of self. You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Source: A Room of One's Own

Source: Thanks for the Memories

The Paris Review interview (1984)
Context: It’s a play about the life and martyrdom of a modern saint, who has just been canonized by the Church — or is it beatified? Which comes first? I’m not sure. Anyway, his name was Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole, and he died in Auschwitz. They were going to send some prisoners to a mine, where they would die of hunger and thirst. Father Kolbe offered to go instead of a man who had a wife and children and didn’t want to die. That man is still alive. … It won’t matter to me at all whether the Church canonizes him or not. The important thing is that such a man existed.

De Anima ii 1, 412b6–9: About the Mind–body problem
De Anima

Minds, Brains and Programs (1980)

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)
Context: Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it’s all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don’t need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is loss, all loss is gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.

Section 3 “Admiralty”, Chapter IX (p. 200)
The Star Fox (1965)

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)