We tire differently if we love or love not.

I have a very basic notion of the structure the book might have - that's mostly it. The rest is luck and happenstance.

Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?

I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.

Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life.

Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal.

First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography.