I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation.

I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.