“Upon the one thing every writer absolutely must have, and that is intellectual curiosity.”

“For every once upon a time there must be a story to follow, because if a story doesn't, something else will, and it might not be as harmless as a story.”

“We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too.”

“The Internet is to our intellectual life what the universal unconscious is to our psychological life. In fact, the Internet is the new universal unconscious. It's not even a metaphor anymore.”

“Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time is forever.”

“The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command.”

“When you think of somebody all the time it means one of two things - either you hate their guts or you like them a lot.”