In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness.

You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too.

I go on many thrilling adventures and wondrous, profound escapades through books.

Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.

Thank God for novelists. Thank God there are people willing to write everything down. Otherwise, so much would be forgotten.

A first grader should understand that her or his culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society...Cultural relativity is defensible, attractive. It's a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.