“It is not good to talk about Zen, because Zen is nothingness... If you talk about it, you are always lying, and if you don't talk about it, no one knows it is there.”

American writer and philosopher

Robert Maynard Pirsig was an American writer and philosopher. He is best known for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, published in 1974, and Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, published in 1991. His work is shaped by philosophical questions about values, morals, and quality. He also co-authored On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Selected and Unpublished Writings with his wife and editor, Wendy Pirsig, which was published in 2022.