There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.

The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the USA and China.

For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.

Mystical additions and subtractions always come out the way you want.

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.