“If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we're talking about when we use the word "identity" has reached an end.”

“We have to restore the meaning of the word 'love.' We have been using it in a careless way. When we say, 'I love hamburgers,' we are not talking about love. We are talking about our appetite, our desire for hamburgers. We should not dramatize our speech and misuse words like that. We make words like 'love' sick that way. We have to make an effort to heal our language by using words carefully. the word 'love' is a beautiful word. We have to restore its meaning (31).”

“We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.”

“Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books - but it is terrible when one has to live it”

“The individual in modern urban society had become `the public`, he said [Kierkegaard], and the predominant characteristic of the crowd, or the masses, was all their noncommittal `talk`. Today we would probably use the word `conformity`; that is when everybody `thinks` and `believes in` the same things without having any deeper feeling about it.”

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”