“Through engagement with others, literature lets us imagine what it would be like to be different.”

“What is the difference between imaginative literature and other sorts of intellectual endeavor?" " Ones about masturbation and the other's about something 'bigger'." …csb”

“If literature has engaged me as a project, first as a reader, then as a writer, it is as an extension of my sympathies to other selves, other domains, other dreams, other territories.”

“The adversary would keep us busily engaged in a multitude of trivial things in an effort to keep us distracted from the few vital things that make all the difference.”

“But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats.For they would surely kill us.”

“The vast majority of us imagine ourselves as like literature people or math people. But the truth is that the massive processor known as the human brain is neither a literature organ or a math organ. It is both and more.”