Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.

It seems to me that the great pleasure of human life is not in having an opinion, but rather in learning all the ways you are wrong, and all the nuances you failed to account for, and all the truths that turned out to be not as simple as you once believed. And it seems to me that one of the central pleasures of attending school is that you get to read with really well-informed people who can help welcome you into a complex world stuffed with rich and maddening ambiguity.

I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.

You may be smart, but I've been smart longer.

And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way.

that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.

We're invisible. I've never been here with someone else. It's different being invisible with someone.