We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.

When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.

I was brought up with the sense that I was absolutely no different from my brothers. I went to college thinking I was absolutely no different from the men in college. But that's not true. I'm fundamentally different. The problem was not being able to understand difference and equality at the same time. It's something that we can't seem to comprehend. You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. It's a mistake.

An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply

Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase "at the end of the day"--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.