“I had learned in the last two years that the more demanding the basic needs of self-preservation grow, the closer one comes to nature.”

“For if men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had a still greater need for knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speaking" - Rousseau”

“Sometimes the gift of an inquisitive nature to the young can be greater than that of the wisdom which comes of age.”

“There are two ways to pass a hurdle: leaping over or plowing through... There needs to be a monster truck option.”

“How can another see into me, into my most secret self, without my being able to see in there myself? And without my being able to see him in me. And if my secret self, that which can be revealed only to the other, to the wholly other, to God if you wish, is a secret that I will never reflect on, that I will never know or experience or possess as my own, then what sense is there in saying that it is my secret, or in saying more generally that a secret belongs, that it is proper to or belongs to some one, or to some other who remains someone. It's perhaps there that we find the secret of secrecy. Namely, that it is not a matter of knowing and that it is there for no one. A secret doesn't belong, it can never be said to be at home or in its place. The question of the self: who am I not in the sense of who am I but rather who is this I that can say who? What is the- I and what becomes of responsibility once the identity of the I trembles in secret?”

“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

“Well then – I see two ways of letting things take their course – Create one’s own sensations with the help of a flamboyant collision of rare words – not often, mind you – or else neatly draw the angles, the squares, the entire geometry of feelings – those of the moment, naturally.”