I think I'm more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it. The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

I think I'm more intensely opinionated when I speak; more agreeably balanced when I write.

The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.