“Even the most innocent of men's affairs seem doomed to cause suffering. Pushing the lawnmower through tall wet grass, and enjoying the strong aroma of the morning, I found that the blades had cut a...”

“If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.”

“The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.”

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, everyday, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to co...”

“Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.”

“Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were...”

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”

“These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on ones own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercis...”

“The joy from eating does not come from the exclusivity of the food, but instead from the sensitivity that we eat it with.”

“Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.”

“The pleasures arising from thinking and learning will make us think and learn all the more. 1153a 23”

“Sex for pleasure, for fun, or even for building relationships is completely absent from our national conversation. Yet taking the joy out of sexuality is a surefire way to ensure not that young wom...”