Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.
A society that fears knowledge is a society that fears itself.
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.
I cannot choose to ignore this feeling, of life slowly bleeding out of me. I cannot ignore the fact that life only makes sense to me when I see a smile, or feel another hand in mine.
In the end, living is defined by dying. Book- ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.
Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.
I'm such a bookworm, and I'm such a people-watcher. It took the Internet a while to catch on in Ireland, because the culture there is, you go to the pub and talk to people there, and that's how you get the news and all the gossip. You just do it face to face. And culturally, you just couldn't understand.
I love the fact that so many of my readers are intelligent, exceptional, accomplished people with an open-minded love of diversity.
For decades, Japan has been a friend and reliable trading partner with the United States, and I anticipate that relationship will prosper.