There are secrets to our world that only practice can reveal, and no opinion or analysis will ever capture in full.

Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut, and don't ask an academic if what he does is relevant.

I am happy everywhere except in places where I see glitz and rich farts. I am happiest in Brooklyn, where the concentration of rich farts is minimal.

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal

I'm in favour of religion as a tamer of arrogance. For a Greek Orthodox, the idea of God as creator outside the human is not God in God's terms. My God isn't the God of George Bush.

Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

Stoicism is about the *domestication* of emotions, not their elimination.