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

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. Becau….

Be contemporary. Have impact. Strive for it. Be of the world. Move it. Be bold, don’t hold back. Then the moment you think you’ve been bold, be bolde….

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. Th….

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 ar….

The more you're drowning in familiarity, the better the fun is. It requires less novelty to produce even more gratification. And it's something that ….

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

I think the most important thing to realize about play is that it's this thing that's in stuff, it's not in you..

If you stop someone who's talking about something being fun, and say "Well what do you mean?" it's almost impossible to answer..

We have to always spread sugar on top of it in order that we can tolerate swallowing the things we're supposed to do, which is an incredibly depressi….

Fun doesn't have anything to do with pleasure, necessarily. I think this will be terrifically unintuitive for people..

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..

We think we want enjoyment, and that enjoyment is incompatible with work, and somehow we have to import the pleasure into these miserable experiences….

Play is this process of operating the world, of manipulating things. It's related to experimentation, and it's related to pleasure, but not defined b….

Play isn't you being clever, or finding a trick, or finding a way of covering over your own misery, or persuading someone to do what you want. It's t….

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 m….

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

You can experience play at work, not because you're messing around or wasting time or something, but because you're looking really deeply and serious….

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 ….

With sports and games, you have fun despite working very hard, even despite failing repeatedly. Even the fun of a night out, you have to get somewher….

You don't want to be told, "Hey, do whatever you want." That's what we think of when we think of play. It's the thing where you get to do whatever yo….