“I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it.Jean-Paul Sartre, Words”

“I'm more interested in arousing enthusiasm in kids than in teaching the facts. The facts may change, but that enthusiasm for exploring the world will remain with them the rest of their lives.”

“I disagree.” She squeezed lovingly. “Your dad has always supported you. All of this negativity, this pent-up aggression and self-loathing—”“I hardly loathe myself. Have you seen my ass?”

“Words are anchors for sense experience, but the experience is not the reality, and the word is not the experience. Language is thus two removes from reality. To argue about the real meaning of a word is rather like arguing that one menu tastes better than another because you prefer the food that is printed on it...To come to believe that the external world is patterned by the way we talk about it is even worse than eating the menu - it is eating the printing ink on the menu. Words can be combined and manipulated in ways that have nothing to do with sensory experience.”

“I looked out to see a forbidding place with granite walls and towering gates,implacable barriers to be reckoned with, the words strung across the archway struck fear intomy confused mind:MARSH LUNATIC ASYLUM.This was my new home for now.”

“My own boyfriend didn't think I had the hypothetical balls to have sex in the park or go to a drag ball in the eighteen hundreds. Was I that much of a wimp?”

“I hardly loathe myself. Have you seen my ass?”