“Occupying the bottom end of the inequality ladder, and becoming a 'collateral victim' of a human action or a natural disaster, interact the way the opposite poles of magnets do: they tend to gravitate towards each other.”

“Each of them always gravitating toward the other. Yet still they do not touch.”

“As if their actions were synchronized, they both jumped off the swings at the same moment, Jay racing toward the laddered steps as Violet rushed to reach the bottom of the slide.”

“America’s education system has become less a ladder of opportunity than a structure to transmit inequity from one generation to the next.”

“The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.”

“Mind and body are in many ways opposite from each other, and mind and body must each act according to its own principles. Nonetheless, while the mind and body are different in disposition, they are complementary opposites that form a single whole. For us to sustain mind and body harmony, and function as whole human beings, we need to discover the actual nature of the mind’s characteristics.”