Kant and Hegel are interesting thinkers. But I am happy to insist that they are also terrible writers.

One wants never to give up this crystalline perspective. One wants to keep counterpositioning home with what one knows of alternative realities, as they exist in Tunis or Hyderabad. One wants never to forget that nothing here is normal, that the streets are different in Wisebaden, and Louyang, that this is just one of many possible worlds.

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.

We may seek a fortune for no greater reason than to secure the respect and attention of people who would otherwise look straight through us.

The arrogance that says analysing the relationship between reasons and causes is more important than writing a philosophy of shyness or sadness or friendship drives me nuts. I can't accept that.

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