“Ive come to think that flourishing consists of putting yourself in situations in which you lose self-consciousness and become fused with other people, experiences, or tasks. It happens sometimes wh...”

“This is how life works. Deciding whom to love is not an alien form of decision-making, a romantic interlude in the midst of normal life. Instead, decisions about whom to love are more intense versi...”

“The imagination simplifies our endless desires and causes us to fantasize that they can be fulfilled.”

“Across the centuries the moral systems from medival chivalry to Bruce Springsteen love anthems have worked the same basic way. They take immediate selfish interests and enmesh them within transcend...”

“They finally achieve a sort of outward-facing union.”

“In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business...”

“You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash.”

“Hey, the ubiquitous Leak-Cam is to 2010 as the bottom-of-the-screen news ticker was to late 2001: What you're seeing beneath the news anchor or talking head may not actually include any new informa...”

“In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business...”

“Damn. I never should have agreed to this. What is he thinking? Here we are in a piece of crap pickup truck on our way to sit outside of a supermarket to kidnap this girl. Damn. Hed better not be fa...”

“Life is a hurricane, and we board up to save what we can and bow low to the earth to crouch in that small space above the dirt where the wind will not reach. We honor anniversaries of deaths by cle...”