“Above all, the thrall in which an ideology holds a people is best measured by their collective inability to imagine alternatives.”

“There are few other four-letter words that hold us all in as much thrall as love.”

“Youth is above all a collection of possibilities.”

“Life is rather above the measure of us all (save for a very few perhaps). We all need literature that is above our measure--though we may not have sufficient energy for it all the time.”

“Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins.”

“[W]hen people are ashamed they hold aloof, above all from those nearest to them, and are unreserved with strangers”