The human species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Human beings do not eat nutrients, they eat food.

Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.

Improvisation can be either a last resort or an established way of evoking creativity.

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, which allows us to grow.

Most higher education is devoted to affirming the traditions and origins of an existing elite and transmitting them to new members.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.