Sanity ... is the most profound moral option of our time.

Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective.

The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.

There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.

In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.