If you're not spending every waking moment of your day radically rethinking the nature of the world-if you're not plotting every moment boiling the carcass of the old order-then you're wasting your day.

If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.

So much information lacks a good way to store it, especially when it's all digital; sometimes it requires old technology to go back and retrieve it.

In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves.

What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing.