“What do you think leads us to the windows in the first place?”

That they chose the path of the mind suggests that there is on it something more worthwhile than a circuitous route to the good things that the good-looking get just by showing up

It’s really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never good at doing in the first place – relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

The basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.

We’ve had mass shootings in the United States in the part of violent antiabortion protesters, in the part of violent pro-ISIS militants.

What we eat is the one simplest way to declare who we are – the table reflects our values with a clarity that few other theaters of human behaviour posses.

Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America-more than six million-than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.

American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World.

This alchemy, of self-absorption into shared experience, is the alchemy of all literature.

The sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it.

The trick and the trap and the horror is not faith, Scott. I don’t think the trap and the horror is fanaticism.

Women choose Alice [in Wonderland] because every woman sees herself as the only reasonable creature among crazy people who think they are disinherited monarchs

Nothing in a graduate degree in art history prepares you for the eloquence of the eraser.

I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.

We call disasters unimaginable, but all we do is imagine such things. […]

Through the tough times, you guys never left my side… That’s something that I really appreciate and I never want to take you guys for granted. I thank you so much for being part of my life. And not just on the basketball court, but giving me talks about growing as a man first, and a basketball player next.

There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.

When Donald Trump’s projects go under, the first people that don’t get paid are the contractors that he’s – some of whom have gone bankrupt.

We’re trendsetters, first to welcome brilliant inventions into our lives, from the microwave meal to Instagram.

After my first year on ‘Gossip Girl,’ everybody said, ‘You’ve got to do a big commercial movie, ride this wave.’

Faulkner didn’t know he was William Faulkner. But they had to take the first step. They had to call themselves writers. That is the first revolutionary act a writer has to make. It takes courage. But it’s necessary

We need a president who is focused on defeating every single ISIS terrorist and protecting the homeland, which should be the first priority.

Religious freedom is often referred to as America’s first freedom. Our country was founded by religious exiles and built on the belief that God has given all people certain inalienable rights.