“Summer in the deep South is not only a season, a climate, it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged.”

“Where are we as a modern civilization if our educational institutions conspire to train only a fraction of our capacities? and if this is all they can really do, then why not acknowledge that fact openly and give legitimacy to the other alternative forms of education that do cultivate those neglected dimensions of personality, instead of pretending that anything lying outside the standards set by the Wester analytic tradition is either inferior, anti-intellectual, or diabolic? (p. 293-294)”

“Overpopulation has a ceiling: earth’s total surface area divided by the dimensions of one economy seat. One more baby is born and hello cannibalism.”

“We need to be virtually bludgeoned into detachment from our daily lives, our habits and mental laziness, which conceal from us the strangeness of the world. Without a fresh virginity of mind, without a new and healthy awareness of existential reality, there can be no theatre and no art either; the real must be in a way dislocated, before it can be re-integrated.”

“The pastoral vocation in America is embarrassingly banal. It is banal because it is pursued under the canons of job efficiency and career management. It is banal because it is reduced to the dimensions of a job description. It is banal because it is an idol – a call from God exchanged for an offer by the devil for work that can be measured and manipulated at the convenience of the worker. Holiness is not banal. Holiness is blazing…”

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

“Sports bars are also a great place for guys to meet other guys--either for sex or for wrestling, whichever feels more right. ”