“[I]f you don't feel or look rich, you don't necessarily feel the same sense of obligation that a traditional rich person does or should: Noblesse oblige is, after all, dependent on a classical idea...”

“Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emo...”

“Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive.”

“Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.”

“I'm the girl nobody knows until she commits suicide. Then suddenly everyone had a class with her.”

“It's okay. We aren't in the same class. Just don't forget that some of us watch the sunset too.”

“We are the same, you and I. Whether samurai or night-hawk, the Suruga Dainagon or member of the Toudouza, it makes no difference. My sword is the proof...."These words, wrung from the very depths o...”

“When you start thinking about what your life was like 10 years ago--and not in general terms, but in highly specific detail--it's disturbing to realize how certain elements of your being are comple...”

“The easiest way to disturb or create an element of horror is to take a positive emotion and put it in a negative situation, to create dissonance.”

“Because of propaganda induced cognitive dissonance, most people hate themselves and don't even know it.”