What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious

The pleasure of jogging and running is rather like that of wearing a fur coat in Texas in August: the true joy comes in being able to take the damn thing off.

That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.

Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.

I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.

Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food.