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

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.

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.

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

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

The eyes of others my our prisons

No, no, " said Taran slowly, "It would be folly to think of attacking them." He smiled quickly at Fflewddur. "The bards would sing of us, " he admitted, "but we'd be in no position to appreciate it.

Before checking that last email before you go to bed, say to yourself, No, I am important. This is important. My body is more important.

The Net is pretty cool, but the physical world is the best medium ever.

You're all so obsessed with other worlds, you're so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you've never bothered to figure out what's going on here!

I would like to do a big movie that many, many people see but I just know I would be miserable if it didn't have something to it.

You have to have access to ideas. The Internet is facilitating that access to ideas. In 25 years, the way that data's going to flow back and forth, we don't quite understand yet.

... if you take a risk, two things will happen. People will laugh at you. Or you'll be way ahead of everybody else. And if that's what you're in it for, then you gotta take that risk.

You have to always remember to be yourself.

He who meanly admires mean things is a Snob.