The finest proof of our loyalty toward one another was our monstrous disloyalties towards everyone else.

We should not feel embarrassed by our difficulties, only by our failure to grow anything beautiful from them.

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.

We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others' appraisals to play a determining role in how we see ourselves. Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among.

At the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.