Stories worked much the same way . . . A false note at the beginning was much more costly than one nearer the end because early errors were part of the foundation.

Were it not for Occam's Razor, which always demands simplicity, I'd be tempted to believe that human beings are more influenced by distant causes than immediate ones. This would especially be true of overeducated people, who are capable of thinking past the immediate, of becoming obsessed by the remote. It's the old stuff, the conflicts we've never come to terms with, that sneaks up on us, half forgotten, insisting upon action.

Some authors have a very hard time understanding that in order to be faithful to the spirit of the book, it's almost always impossible to remain faithful to the text. You have to make changes.

Whatever you're working on, take small bites. The task will not be overwhelming if you can reduce it to its smallest component.

Even at its most perceptive, sociology deals in abstractions.

He looks like he could be taken in a fight. Not by me, but by somebody. Not anyone in Humanities, probably.

In the end it all came down to companionship, to friendship, to sacrifice, to compromise.