Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

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

Blind impatience is equally evident in the fruit section. Our ancestors might have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found on the underside of a bush in late summer, viewing it as a sign of the unexpected munificence of a divine creator, but we became modern when we gave up on awaiting sporadic gifts from above and sought to render any pleasing sensation immediately and repeatedly available.

The problem isn't so much finding good ideas (there is no shortage) as embedding the ones we have into everyday practice.

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.