No wonder we cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke: that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from the horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, needing ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what's true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you're smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, "Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it's not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.

You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.

For me, boviscopophobia is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.