“What is the world? What is it for? It is an art. It is the best of all possible art, a finite picture of the infinite. Assess it like prose, like poetry, like architecture, sculpture, painting, dance, delta blues, opera, tragedy, comedy, romance, epic. Assess it like you would a Faberge egg, like a gunfight, like a musical, like a snowflake, like a death, a birth, a triumph, a love story, a tornado, a smile, a heartbreak, a sweater, a hunger pain, a desire, a fufillment, a desert, a waterfall, a song, a race, a frog, a play, a song, a marriage, a consummation, a thirst quenched. Assess it like that. And when you're done, find an ant and have him assess the cathedrals of Europe.”

“Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.”

“Assessment in this spirit does not concern assignment of grades or evaluation of whether instruction was effective. It's assessment designed squarely to feed into the learning process and make the learning stronger.”

“I’d like to assess all the asses on the beach. By hand. I should try to get a sponsorship from an oven mitt manufacturer.”

“...the best poems were like little vessels that carry messages that can’t be transported in any other way; miniature worlds like tiny paintings or Faberge eggs.”

“Real life is disobliging. People like to think, or feel, in black and white. Having to assess the relative values of all those intermediate greys is tiresome and perplexing.”

“Parents have this twisted belief that anyone under the age of about twenty simply can’t know what love is, like the age to love is assessed in the same way the law assesses the legal age to drink. They think that the ‘emotional growth’ of a teenager’s mind is too underdeveloped to understand love, to know if it’s ‘real’ or not.That's completely asinine.The truth is that adults love in different ways, not the only way.”