In English, we don't have a word for people who aren't virgins. What the non-virgin lexical gap really made me think was that our obsession with sexual purity is such that once you are no longer this THING, you are indescribable.

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.

And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I've been smart longer.

Frankly, I kind of want you to be haunted by the unansweredness of the question, because I think being haunted by such things is a valuable part of being a person.

People believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.

At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.

True love will triumph in the end—which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have.