Self-actualization is what educated existence is all about. For members of the educated class, life is one long graduate school. When they die, God meets them at the gates of heaven, totes up how many fields of self-expression they have mastered, and then hands them a divine diploma and lets them in.

Obamacare is woven into the fabric of health care. It's very hard to just rip it out, as Donald Trump sort of acknowledged with The Wall Street Journal.

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of judges overruling presidents on national security matters.

I think the voters who voted for Donald Trump certainly are willing to tolerate a lot of ugliness, but maybe, if you're in desperate circumstances, or you think America is deeply in trouble, you're willing to tolerate that without necessarily liking it.

If we got rid of everybody in Washington who sold access for donations, then the town would be empty. But it's unseemly.

Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different. They crash through the logic of individual utility and behave paradoxically. Instead of recoiling from the sorts of loving commitments that almost always involve suffering, they throw themselves more deeply into them. Even while experiencing the worst and most lacerating consequences, some people double down on vulnerability. They hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.

For the Republican Convention, I think of Trump's speech and sort of the darkness, the fear of crime, the need for a strong arm really, and so that one core theme.