But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.

Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

But nothing disturbs the feeling of specialness like the presence of other human beings feeling identically special.

To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can’t really multitask reading a book.

The reason this system can’t be overthrown in this country,” Walter said, “is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they’re not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn’t rational. It’s taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it.

And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?

The world was ending then, it's ending still, and I'm happy to belong to it again.