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.

Do not underestimate objects.

It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.

To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty.

What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic.

The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.