“It is probably true that most people have more fun in bed than anywhere else, and we are not being vulgar. Even going to bed alone can be alluring. There are many times, in fact, when it's by far the most alluring way to go.”

“Certainly, affairs should not even be thought of before you are thirty.”

“We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation--the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered--is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.”

“It seems that the desire to oppress others is so ingrained in many humans that they readily distort even a liberating theory or concept into its inverse, creating another wall of defense against positive change. Ultimately, an unbiased observer of human behavior must conclude that most action is not shaped by theory, but rather theories are shaped to conform to actions we have no intention of changing.”

“(About "Black Debt" by Steve McCaffery)'Impersonal' as this text is, it is by no means unemotional or uninvolved. We learn nothing-- at least nothing direct-- about McCaffery's (or his narrator's) personal life, his opinions or ruminations. Nonetheless I would posit that 'Lag' projects a highly particularized way of looking at things, of processing the most diversified information fields-- geology and genetics, archeology and advertising, classics and commercials-- that is finally recognizable in its particular ways of negotiating with language as is the more personal lyric consciousness we expect to find in poetry.”

“When all else fails, the only thing you can do is to look above.”

“We each do the best we can. My best may not be as good as your best, but it's my best. The fact is we know when we are doing our best and when we are not. If we are not doing our best, it leaves us with a gnawing hunger and frustration. But when we do our best, we experience a peace.”