Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life meunderstand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest.

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.

Radar is too long in the tooth for fine detail.

If the rest of your brain were conscious, it would probably regard you as the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?

Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.

Brains are survival engines, not truth detectors.

After four thousand years we can’t even prove that reality exists beyond the mind of the first-person dreamer.

You can’t turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing something.

Bring to me, it said, continual proof / you've been alive.

I love to lose myself in other men's minds.... Books think for me.

The city is the size of a country, but has been operated like a candy store.

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

I said, the poets are there I hear them singing and lying around their round table and around me still.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

Truth resists simplicity.

Frankly, the people probably most interested in having computer lists on disk are junk mail vendors and solicitors.

No single imagination is wild or crass or cheesy enough to compete with the collective mindlessness that propels our fascination forward.

All are one family, serve all.