The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

Debt is not just a money thing. It's about owing and being owed. Money is just one thing you can exchange. You can exchange good deeds, you can exchange revenge, you can exchange murders.

Americans don't usually have to think about Canadian-American relations, or, as they would put it, American-Canadian relations. Why think about something which you believe affects you so little? We, on the other hand, have to think about you whether we like it or not.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don't know the plot. They don't know their own individual plot... they don't know what's going to happen to them.

friendship was always contingent.

Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.

They are hypocrites, they think the Church is a cage to keep God in, so he will stay locked up there and not go wandering about the earth during the week, poking his nose into their business, and looking in the depths and darkness and doubleness of their hearts, and their lack of true charity; and they believed they need only be bothered about him on Sundays when they have their best clothes on and their faces straight, and their hands washed and their gloves on, and their stories all prepared.