Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

People genuinely happy in their choices seem less often tempted to force them on other people than those who feel martyred and broken by their lives.

Every artist seems to me to have the job of bearing witness to the world we live in. To some extent I think of all of us as artists, because we have voices and we are each of us unique.

The message of women's liberation is that women can love each other and ourselves against our degrading education.

I didn't want to be a boy, ever, but I was outraged that his height and intelligence were graces for him and gaucheries for me.

Morality is a test of our conformity rather than our integrity.

To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

I've never been resigned to ready-made ideas as I was to ready-made clothes, perhaps because although I couldn't sew, I could think.

If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.

I had always said to myself that forty was the cut off point of my apprenticeship which may for some people sound like a very long one, but the novel as art is a middle-aged art.

I'll show you how, " Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.

What would people think?'Jesus said that people think all sorts of things. The human mind is like a cloud of gnats. Constant motion. That's why you have to look at the heart.'Oh, ' said Grandpa.

The applause of all but very good men is no more than the precise measure of their possible hostility.

Of course {I'm bisexual}. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it's okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!

The more you ask certain questions, the more dangerous they become.

The poem is in my hands, and can run stories through her hands.

I got a man cave. I play my music loud. I bought big speakers because I need to hear music loud.

Like other high subjects, the Law gives no ground to common sense.

I was well-rounded, I'd been to college. It wasn't that I couldn't do anything else. I wanted to stay in sports, but if I couldn't think, how was I going to play?

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber