It seems important to find ways of reminding ourselves that most "familiarity" is meditated and delusive.

I do things like get in a taxi and say, "The library, and step on it.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

One of the things that makes Wittgenstein a real artist to me is that he realized that no conclusion could be more horrible than solipsism.

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

This might be one way to start talking about differences between the early postmodern writers of the fifties and sixties and their contemporary descendants.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.

In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.

Friendship is the best kind of ship.

All ideas in a truly free society should always be open for discussion.

The old agility was still present and the passion was undeniable, but it was the wobbling of the gut, the puffing of the cheeks and the profuse sweating that lent the performance its true magic.

Truth is independent of all dogmas, ancient or modern.

Give Bethod a kick from me, once you have him under your boot.""That I will, unless he gets me under his.""Never easy, kicking upwards.

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.

American power in the world relies on these ideals of openness and critical debate.

In my view, the ideal prime minister is patient, hard-working, compassionate and has a clear vision, driven by the fair go.

Peaceful is the one who's not concerned with having more or less. Unbound by name and fame, he is free from sorrow from the world and mostly from himself.

Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.