When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

If ideas are what feed serious literature and arresting language, who today is writing a novel of ideas (which can often mean comedy)? I think of Joshua Cohen. Who else?

He who cries, 'What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me,' does not know even that.

In real life wishing, divorced from willing, is sterile and begets nothing.

The trouble with happiness is that it never notices itself.

When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Life is that which - pressingly, persistently, unfailingly, imperially - interrupts.