“We used awesome the way the British used brilliant: for anything at all. Perhaps . . . it was a kind of antidepressant: inflated rhetoric to keep the sorry truth at bay.”

“A brick could be used to ascertain the truth. And then logically, a non-brick could be used to detect the lie. What kind of things are non-bricks? Well, anything from blankets to lies. So therefore, a lie could be used to detect a lie, and all this logic makes me want to grab a blanket and lie down—and that’s the truth. 
”

“A philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything other except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.”

“I hate to think of you stuck here all day every day, doing nothing with that brilliant brain of yours.”“It never was brilliant. Anyway, who keeps these books to see who’s used themselves wisely and who’s wasted?”

“Now he turned the radio on to the news. As we did our separate chores, we listened and commented idly to each other on what we heard—the politics, the plane crashes and crimes, the large disasters of the day, which we all use to keep the smaller, more long-term sorrows at bay.”

“Just because we haven’t met Mr. Right doesn’t mean we’re doing anything wrong. And by the way, you’re brilliant and awesome, too. If I were alesbian, I’d totally settle down with you and make lots of in vitro babies.”