"Journalism is a character defect. I think most non-journalists would agree with this. It is life lived at a safe remove: standing off to one side of the parade as it passes, noting its flaws, offering glib and unworkable suggestions for its improvement. Every journalist must know that this is not, really, how a serious-minded person would choose to spend his days. Serious-minded people do things; a journalist chatters about the things serious-minded people do, and so, not coincidentally, avoids having to do them himself. A significant body of research indicates that non-journalists find us insufferable, perhaps for this reason."

"The way we work, the way we talk, the way we watch television or walk down the street, even the way we fuck, or maybe that especially—each of those is part of the problem of identity. We can’t do any …"

"It's the same story, over and over again! The same dependency, the same slugism, that we see mirrored all around us. Hated by the people, we build! Hated by the people we empower! Hated by the people …"

"The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, f…"

"One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one."