“To understand the world, one’s place in it, is to be always at the risk of drowning.”

“Only learning oneself better, and understanding one’s place in the world, made the touch of another mundane.”

“One’s lover is one’s partner in observing and understanding the world. Marriage is a place where joint narratives are composed. If the lover is a liar then all your joint observations are unreliable. You will have to start all over again.”

“A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American.”

“Ideas and their creators run the world…one’s place in the world is due partially to the ideas that a culture has forced on one and/or the ideas that a person “freely” accepts and uses.”

“To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.”