We sometimes imagine we want what we don't really want.

Demonstration of mastery gives a feeling of power and that feeling of power is a good feeling.

I think that it's important for people to read philosophy and literature is not because I think everyone should be a well-rounded human being, but because it will help you think better about what you are doing.

The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

The recollections of an older man are different from those of a younger man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.

Dreams are stories made by and for the dreamer, and each dreamer has his own folds to open and knots to untie.

Human beings are repetitive animals. All meaning is generated through repetition.