“Clear perception requires emotional distance. It's hard to be wise while you're still squirming.”

“The human soul is heavy, clumsy, held in the mud of the flesh. Its perceptions are still coarse and brutish. It can divine nothing clearly, nothing with certainty.”

“It is hard for people to think clearly because their emotional needs keep getting in the way. The trick is to make thinking clearly an emotional need.”

“Paradigms power perceptions, perceptions power emotions.”

“While it's certainly true that raising children is a big job and certainly has emotional resonance, it's really hard to intellectually justify the belief that you're adding something important to the world by adding more people to pollute the planet and compete for opportunities that become more precious as the number of people vying for a chance grows.”

“When you're young, you think it's going to be solved by love. But it never is. Being close-as close as you can get-to another person only makes it clear the impassable distance between you.”