We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion.

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary.

Books go out into the world, travel mysteriously from hand to hand, and somehow find their way to the people who need them at the times when they need them ... Cosmic forces guide such passings-along.

You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy.

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.

we write as if our lives depended upon it. They do.