“Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.”

“The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.”

“The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.”

“It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.”

“..we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide.”

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.”

“He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.”