Eva Hoffman Quotes

Laughter is the lightning rod of play, the eroticism of conversation.

The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become--and such lucidity is a form of joy.

The authentic is almost never found by being pursued; but there is no missing it when you are in its presence.

There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

It may be that just as tonality recurs in music and realism in painting, so the idea of liberalism recurs in politics-though each time in a different vein.

The vision of an entire world becoming just like us is at least as discomfiting as the thought that most of it won't.

Why look any further if you've discovered complete satisfaction.

While we allow the inhabitants of imaginary remote corners the authenticity of savages or sufferers, we rarely suppose them to possess the authenticity of complex, sophisticated perceptions.

Perhaps, if we don't always have a conscious conscience, we have a subliminal one, from which the memory of past wrongs is not so easily erased.

The wonder is what you can make a paradise out of.

The worst losses come at night.

Sometimes I long to forget… It is painful to be conscious of two worlds.

I know that language will be a crucial instrument, that I can overcome the stigma of my marginality, the weight of presumption against me, only if the reassuringly right sounds come out of my mouth.