The very essence of school is elitism. Schools exist to teach, to test, to rank hierarchically to promote the idea that knowing and understanding more is better than knowing and understanding less.

No longer a mark of distinction or proof of achievement, a college education is these days a mere rite of passage, a capstone to adolescent party time.

Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery.

Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.

Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability.

The fact is that some people are better than others - smarter, harder working, more learned, more productive, harder to replace.

The dominant mood of contemporary American culture is the self-celebration of the peasantry.

A poet laureate of adolescent sexuality and middle-age longing.

In my mind, partial failure is always better than delusory success.

It is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the Moon as to put a bone in your nose.

If you fuel your journey on the opinions of others, you are going to run out of gas.

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

You know you are capitalism’s ideal puppet (and that education betrayed you) when winning the lottery is your only chance to realizing financial freedom.

One thing you'll learn as you get older, Simon, is that when people tell you something unpleasant about themselves, it's usually true.

I grew up in the Bronx where you would stay up late with your girlfriends, just being silly in our bedrooms, whatever. And I was always the clown.

It's a difficult thing for a city to be sued by the department of justice and to be told that your police department is systematically failing to serve the people of the state or the city.

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

Having kids is something I want to see in my future - I hope.

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.

To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished.