Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical.

The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

Usually, autobiography is such an indulgence of the ego.

Maybe most people were fundamentally contradictory. The real people at any rate.

Reality is contradictory. And it's paradoxical. If there's any one word -- if you had to pick one word to describe the nature of the universe -- I think that word would be paradox. That's true at the subatomic level, right through sociological, psychological, philosophical levels on up to cosmic levels.

Serious reading is hardly a social activity and every halfway serious reader is perpetually subject to a form of coitus interruptus. Family members or friends who lack the desire, the courage, or the opportunity to burst in on you when there's some indication that you could be sexually entwined will seldom hesitate to interject themselves between you and a page, even though the act of reading is often as intimate and intense as a full-fledged carnal embrace.