“Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work.”

“Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism.Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.”

“In order to understand what another person is saying, you must assume it is true and try to imagine what it might be true of.”

“Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will put an end to hard copies, even for someone like me who loves technology and does not fetishize the physical medium of books. ~ Steven Pinker, author of The Lauguage Instinct, How the Mind Works The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.”

“When you're alone and you feel sad, try reading a book. Try touching someone's heart. Try to imagine what they were thinking, what they wanted to convey. If you do that, you might get something amazing.”

“But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress — because when you are imagining you might as well imagine something worth while…”