No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

Good readers make much out of little.

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

He claimed his modest share of the general foolishness of the human race.

An indefinable something is to be done in a way nobody knows how at a time nobody knows when that will accomplish nobody knows what.

The unfolding of the bare human soul...that is what interests me.

The price of our non-discipleshi p is high for those without Christ.

There have been people who have categorized the bands of perception in different yogic systems. It gives them pleasure to create names and orders and to make catalogs. Human beings like that.

I like moral judgment to emerge from the reader. We are being sold a very simplistic morality by our leaders at a time when nuance and understanding are at a premium.

Yesterday I, along with a bipartisan Congressional Delegation of lawmakers, inspected the detention facilities at Guantanamo used to house individuals detained in the War on Terrorism.

You must relate athletic experiences to life.

One face is given to us by god. The other,we make ourselves

I don't wear heels every day, but when I'm out, that's how I feel confident.