Ian Bogost Mean Quotations

This willingness to be frank and plain about the way that the world is, is a good first step. But that doesn't mean that you get what you want.

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

The problem with fun is we really don't know what fun means at all.

Play becomes a distraction, something you don't really need to do. It's not for serious people. They work hard, they don't play hard. Yes, you can say play hard, but that really means, keep working hard, right?

For me, what fun means is finding novelty in the suffocating familiarity of ordinary life.

Actually a lot of the supposedly serious and meaningful and worthwhile content on the podcast or on the television is no more or less meaningful than the clothes in the laundry basket or the dishes in the sink. It's more a matter of the attention you're willing to bring to them, where you're willing to allow meaning and pleasure and the light to escape.

Once you get yourself on that path where you're willing to find something delightful in laundry and in dishwashers, it means that you train yourself to be able to find it almost anywhere in almost anything.

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.