The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I’ve decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people...That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.

Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").

[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?

I think the only thing for me, the tricky thing with the footnotes, is that they are an irritant, and they require a little extra work, and so they either have to be really germane or they have to be kind of fun to read.