Too much apology doubles the offense.

If you do more than your share you'd better want to: otherwise, you're paying yourself in a currency recognized nowhere else.

It is the empty seats that listen most raptly.

Sophistication is upscale conformity.

Metaphor isn't just a fancy turn of speech. It shapes our thoughts and feelings, reaches out to grasp new experience, and even binds our five disparate senses. James Geary's fascinating and utterly readable I is an Other brings the news on metaphor from literature and economics, from neuroscience and politics, illuminating topics from consumer behavior to autism spectrum disorders to the evolution of language. As a writer, as a teacher, and as someone just plain fascinated by how our minds work, I've been waiting years for exactly this book.

Nothing important comes with instructions.

Any virtue systematically applied becomes a vice. Morality is attention, not system.