"I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher."

"You speak of the good conduct of your ancestors. As your own conduct is under discussion, and not theirs, I cannot see how their former good character can at all serve your present purpose. Fortunately for our country, every man stands upon his own merit."

"The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on."

"The epiphany machine will not discover anything about you that you do not, in some way, already know. But think for a moment about surprise. What is surprising is never what is revealed but the grace with which it has been hidden."

"When you don't have access to a subject, and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events. Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband."

"A writer should be able to open a window or two for others to see the world and themselves in a new light. Anything less is just self–indulgence and intellectual masturbation."