“What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding.”

“Good politicians need not be intellectuals, but they should have intellectual lives.”

“من هو المثقف؟ بشكل عام هو شخص كرّس نفسه لما يسمى «حياة العقل»، أي التفكير ليس بوصفه أداة أو وسيلة لتحقيق أغراض عملية، وإنما بقصد المعرفة والفهم”

“What use, Milton, a silly story Of our lost general parents, eaters of fruit?”

“When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.”

“I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been--of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent.”

“Never allow dogmatic interpretations of Karma to keep you from defending what is right or just. You must accept the reality that on occasion, you may very well be the proper instrument of this cosmic force.”