“Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness.”

“The personal values managers reported being the most under pressure to compromise to do their jobs successfully: 1. Family 2. Integrity.”

“The novel since its origins has been the privatization of history... the history of private life ... and in that sense every novel is an historical novel....”

“To go for liberal arts meant becoming that vague, mysterious entity, a 'liberal arts type'--the kind of person who in all likelihood would never successfully occupy any particular position in society, and who in the end would just vanish in a puff of smoke.”

“We all woke up this morning and we had with it the amazing return of our conscious mind. We recovered minds with a complete sense of self and a complete sense of our own existence — yet we hardly ever pause to consider this wonder.”

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”