If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.

I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.

One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.

Women who love only women may have a good point.

Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers -- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.

Susan Sontag: What she really wanted, throughout her career, was to grow up to be a Frenchman.