All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference bet… - Carlos Castañeda

One shouldn't worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.

He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved everything that was a man’s lot — joy, pain, sadness and struggle — and that the nature of one’s acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior. Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it — purge it, make it perfect — because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything. He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound conviction, “To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood.

..He patted me vigorously on the back and laughed. “Wish him well, Carlitos,” he said. “Wish him well.” I was very tired. I had a strange surge of happy sadness. I told him that I came from a place where people rarely if ever wish one another well. “I know,” he said. “The same thing happened to me. But I’m a warrior now and I can afford to wish him well.