Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

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.

The problem with clichés is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones...If...we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

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 telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.