“We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.”

“...a book is actually a place, a place where we, as adults, still have the chance to engage in active imagining, translating word into image, connecting these images to memories, dreams and larger ideas. Television, film, even the stage play, have already been imagined for us, but the book, in whatever form we choose to interact with it, forces us to complete it... The fact that books provide us the place to imagine is critically important, as it is there, in the imagination, that all sense of possibility rests.”

“Inside all of us is a light, but some beacons are darker than others, and some are so dark they never realize they are a form of light at all.”

“Darling, we're all whores under the skin, whether we give ourselves by calculation or by desire. It's just that some of us demand a higher price than others.”

“By using repetition, images, and other strategies - all of which communicate truths in ways that are not cognitively or propositional - marketing forms us into the kind of persons who want to buy beer to have meaningful relationships, or to buy a car to be respected, or buy the latest thing to come along simply to satisfy the desire that has been formed and implanted in us. It is important to appreciate that these disciplinary mechanisms transmit values and truth claims, but not via propositions or cognitive means; rather, the values are transmitted more covertly...This covertness of the operation is also what makes it so powerful: the truths are inscribed in us through the powerful instruments of imagination and ritual.”

“some we know to be dead even though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through all the forms of life; other are hundreds of years old though they call themselves thirty-six”