“...my thoughts don't really bump along this way, but they do bump somehow, and it's more honest--more pedagogically useful, more truthful--to arrange them in a loose, disconnected, provisional way than to deliver only the conclusions.”

“No doubt he is more than that, but we have no time to inquire.”

“One makes discoveries about oneself but more often one makes up discoveries.”

“If life were a sea adventure, I knew: I wouldn't be sailor, pirate, or cabin boy but more likely a barnacle clinging to the side of the boat.”

“Don't tell me you're reading it,' she said, as if I were doing something to the book, whereas in fact the book was doing something to me.”

“The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution.”

“The essay is a modest genre. It doesn't mean to change the world. Instead it says: let me tell you what happened to me.”