I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list.

Al forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.

The point is to get a good rhythm, to make it mindless, almost as a daydream. To walk like breathing. To make it what the body wants, what the air wants, what time wants.

The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.