A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together.

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.

In December 1998, I considered myself an expert on love. I was almost a year into a relationship, one that had grown more slowly than I had wished, but once it flowered it was much more stimulating than any marriage or relationship I had known.

I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?

Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

Critical thinking is to a liberal education as faith is to religion. ... the converse was true also - faith is to a liberal education as critical thinking is to religion, irrelevant and even damaging.