Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ian Bogost
Age: 47
Born: 1976
Born: December 30
Entrepreneur
Philosopher
University Teacher
Video Game Designer
Video Game Developer
Writer
Nowhere
Meaning
Says
Find
Lawn
Wakes
Lawns

More quotes by Ian Bogost

Image
I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful insights that play provides.
Ian Bogost
Image
When we use this word fun, it sort of bangs up the ordinary and the extraordinary altogether.
Ian Bogost
Image
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
Image
Any phrase that suggests play is this domain that's the opposite of work, or the thing that you do when you're done working, should trouble us. Because it means that play is always relegated to the exhaust of life. It's the thing that you do after you do the important stuff, it's what you do on your own time.
Ian Bogost
Image
A fun movie is something that is pleasurable without being demanding, you don't have to think too hard.
Ian Bogost
Image
If you think about the contexts in which we talk about things being fun, often there's a certain kind of misery or effort that's involved with it. The difficulty of travel, getting all your bags packed and your work done and navigating the airports and all that. That sort of struggle.
Ian Bogost
Image
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
Image
We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure.
Ian Bogost
Image
The universe is not particularly concerned with you.
Ian Bogost
Image
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
Image
The playful perspective is not meant to turn your life into a game or a jungle gym. It's rather that the activity is looking outside of yourself.
Ian Bogost
Image
The modern world is very wealthy, it's full of options. It's not like This is the land I was born on and I have to make the most of it, and these are the people who are near me, and so they will become my family.
Ian Bogost
Image
You allow yourself to discover the things that are already there when you play.
Ian Bogost
Image
God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today.
Ian Bogost
Image
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
Image
If you stop someone who's talking about something being fun, and say Well what do you mean? it's almost impossible to answer.
Ian Bogost
Image
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
Image
Our ideas of happiness, gratification, contentment, satisfaction, all demand that those feelings come from within us. If you flip that on its head and say What if I took the world at face value? and then ask What can I do with what is given? it's an interesting trick to turn around the whole problem of how you feel.
Ian Bogost
Image
We think we want enjoyment, and that enjoyment is incompatible with work, and somehow we have to import the pleasure into these miserable experiences. That takes for granted that there's not fun or play to be found in the work itself.
Ian Bogost
Image
The actual effort that you can exert upon the universe is fairly limited.
Ian Bogost