In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.

The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.