"The Diagnosis" had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes. I would do something and let it sit for three months... just brood about and decide I needed to slightly change something here or there. Or one character wasn't quite right. But I think everybody goes through this.

Sadness is no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum.

-But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present.

It's the Platonic philosophy in The Republic that philosophers should lead the country.