“Is there some lesson on how to be friends?I think what it means is that central to livinga life that is good is a life that's forgiving.We're creatures of contact regardless of whetherwe kiss or we...”

“For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are...”

“I had a tumor. But it was great.”

“During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost...”

“There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, ...”

“It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with ...”

“Is there magic in this world? Certainly! But it is not the kind of magic written about in fantasy stories. It is the kind of magic that comes from ideas and the hard work it often takes to make the...”

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

“A culture of unaccountability is a culture without incentive, and a culture without incentive is the death of critical and creative thinking.”