I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

War is smaller in scale than in recent memory, but it is far more ambiguous, intractable, and nasty. Money flows more quickly than ever, but it is still somehow manages to gather and puddle in certain places, for certain people rather then others.

Our desires are never wholly transparent, even to ourselves.

If anyone is tweeting right now, I'm not pulling a knife on David Cronenberg!

Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.

I hold to the idea that civility, understood as the willingness to engage in public discourse, is the first virtue of citizens.

Tyranny is abhorrent, freedom benefits all, whereas violence benefits no one for long.