Robert Greene almost died. Here’s what it taught him about living

“You have seduction, another one. Control. Mastery, another one about control. And it seems like Sublime is saying almost the exact opposite. It's about letting go and being small rather than being larger than life. Can you explain what the book is and how it relates to the other books?”

“very troubling. The other thing is, and I talk about this in my Sublime book, we're gifted with this brain that is one of the most incredible, amazing things in the universe, this insane product of evolution, the human brain.”

“will connect you in some way to the sublime. You had this amazing line in your book where you're talking about how why chasing things, why we, you know, adults feel flat inside and there's something about us that feels flat.”

“There must be a reason, a purpose behind it. And the purpose was for me to write one more large book, The Sublime, despite all the physical limitations that I had. And that I was staying, I was kept alive for a reason to write this particular book.”

“I have felt that with 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, Art of Seduction, maybe Art of War, but for sure, it sounds like Sublime and 48 Laws of Power as well, where I was like, man, I wish I would have dedicated two years to mastering these like four texts because like human nature, I'm like, this is applicable to everyone.”

“How does that apply to people who are trying to like promote shit? Well, I'm out there now a lot because of the Sublime book, but I disappear for quite a long time. And I never ever post about what I had for breakfast or photographs from, you know, where I've traveled to or, you know, my cats in the house.”

“That's going to be great. I had to write in notebooks for the Sublime book, and I had two notebooks. I'd write in one, and then I would rewrite it in another notebook, literally rewrite word for word and edit as I'm rewriting it, right?”

“What do you find? I have the last chapter of the Sublime book is about the Death Sublime. And I go into near-death experiences and I describe four of them because the literature, literally, since the 1960s and advances in medicine, millions of people have had near-death experiences.”

“And so a lot of people are rebelling against that. And I think that kind of sense of, and I talk a lot about it actually in my new book, The Sublime, is going back to things of the past and going back to who we actually are, what our spirit is, is to me a way to kind of connect to what I consider that American myth.”

“You wrote this new book Sublime. And it's interesting because if I look at the books you're popular for, you're famous for, you've got 48 Laws of Power. Power, I mean, self-explanatory. It's like a very masculine, very sort of forceful grab it by the neck sort of word.”

“And he's like talking about how everything's great, but for all miserable. And I think it was 48 Laws of Power. I forget which book it was, but there was one story that I might be butchering, but I think you said that some of the first bits of writing ever discovered was about one generation complaining about the next generation saying they're lazy.”

“for a book. And I kind of improvised what turned into the 48 laws of power. And he ended up paying me to live while I wrote the book and we became partners on the project.”

“I've consulted with individuals before. The problem with a course is if you're, I think it would have great value for the 48 laws of power, for instance, if in college somebody were to teach that.”

“You don't know my private life. So there's a level of mystery there. If I was completely transparent about my private life, then I'd be violating a lot of the 48 laws of power. But I know certain things that I've got to like withhold from the public.”

“You have seduction, another one. Control. Mastery, another one about control. And it seems like Sublime is saying almost the exact opposite. It's about letting go and being small rather than being larger than life.”

“And I have felt this way. You're going to think that this is too grandiose and ridiculous. I have felt that with 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, Art of Seduction, maybe Art of War, but for sure, it sounds like Sublime and 48 Laws of Power as well, where I was like, man, I wish I would have dedicated two years to mastering these like four texts”

“I wrote a book called Mastery, and it's about mastering your career, mastering your profession, reaching that level where you almost don't have to think, where you just have a sense, a fingertip feel for what's going on.”

“You have seduction, another one. Control. Mastery, another one about control. And it seems like Sublime is saying almost the exact opposite. It's about letting go and being small rather than being larger than life.”

“I thought Phil Jackson kind of embodied that. So in the art of seduction, I tried to literally kind of define charisma because as you say, it's kind of this intangible thing. And how do you actually describe it or where does it come from?”

“There's a very great book I enjoyed a lot, but by a skeptic, and I'm not a skeptic, but I like reading all the different aspects. This book called Dying to Live by this woman, I think it's Susan Blackmore is her name.”

“can do anything. If these guys can do this, surely I can have a difficult conversation. Well, there was a man, Victor Frankl, who wrote a book, Man's Search for Meaning, very famous book. He was in Auschwitz. He was in concentration camp. And he later became a psychotherapist.”

“No, your point is very valid. I know I've told this before in other podcasts, but I have a special bicycle because I can't hike or anything. It's a recumbent bike. And I got like the lightest weight one I can because we have these incredible hills here.”

“Well, confidence is by far the most charismatic quality that you could have. As you may know, I spent six, seven months with 50 Cent writing the 50th Law, my fourth book. And 50 has intense charisma.”

“I like reading a lot of like World War II and Holocaust books. And me too. It's crazy. Like there's this one called The Escape Artist, and it's one of the only guys to escape from Auschwitz, one of the other Jews. I never heard of this. It's fantastic. I mean, it's, you know, I don't know, fantastic as you describe it, but it's definitely riveting.”

“What drives me crazy with these these new technologies is that I wrote a whole book, Laws of Human Nature, about how humans have a dark side, irrationality, grandiosity, envy, short-sightedness, you know, on and on and on.”