“Clarity is a sign of intellectual energy.”

“Maybe that was the sign of a true intellectual--someone who could accept the weird.”

“We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.”

“You are joy, looking for a way to express. It's not just that your purpose is joy, it is that you are joy. You are love and joy and freedom and clarity expressing. Energy-frolicking and eager. That's who you are.”

“I think that anti-Jewish prejudice is an unfailing sign of a sick and disordered person ... It's a horrible, conspiratorial, pseudo-intellectual, mean spirited, eventually lethal piece of bigotry.”

“He liked the idea of coffee quite a lot—a warm drink that gave you energy and had been for centuries associated with sophisticates and intellectuals. But coffee itself tasted to him like caffeinated stomach bile.”