“Learning was a by-product of her search for pleasure”

“We are primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.”

“If the article mentions some celebrity-perhaps a recently dead politician-the author will want to mention some pointless detail from her last meeting with that person or the emotions she experienced when learning of the subject's death.”

“Much of life is about failure, whether we acknowledge it or not, and your destiny is profoundly shaped by how effectively you learn from and adapt to failure.”

“Bobos are uncomfortable with universal moral laws that purport to regulate pleasure. Bobos prefer more prosaic self-controlled regimes. The things that are forbidden are unhealthy or unsafe. The things that are encouraged are enriching or calorie burning. In other words, we regulate our carnal desires with health codes instead of moral codes.”

“[The public intellectual] will also describe how she can work a pop culture reference into her essay, comparing the Supreme Court to the creature in the number-one box office movie of the moment. Editors like this sort of mass-media integration, first, because it gives them a way to illustrate the piece, and second because they are under the delusion that pop-culture references will propel a piece's readership into the five-digit area.”

“It is especially painful when narcissists suffer memory loss because they are losing parts of the person they love most. ”