“The conservatism of a religion - it's orthodoxy - is the inert coagulum of a once highly reactive sap.”

“I shook my head. "it's not about living in a city."It wasn't. Back then, it wasn't just getting away. It was about not coming back. It wasn't just the size and sensibility of this place that made in unbearable, but its pull - the weird magnetism that could sap your ambition, clip your wings, leave you inert and fascinated and sinking ever deeper into the choking quicksand of small-town life.”

“Once you stop being locked into viewing reality from just one perspective, you will start to be free from habitual reactivity.”

“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.”

“Originality is putting its pants on while orthodoxy is ready to deliver.”

“True, (Jefferson's) rational religion ran in rivulets outside the American mainstream, but heterodoxy is faith of a different form and, like orthodoxy, should be recognized for what it is: a way of being religious.”