'… the experience of reading texts which harbour such a philosophical ideal will itself be subject to the same fears and fantasies—a fear of all but inevitable expressiveness, a fantasy of all but impossible community, and a sense that there is nothing of oneself that is not given expression, and put at stake, in Wittgenstein's words, and hence in the burden of bearing their meaning even when one comes to feel that no one else could understand what they mean—either to Wittgenstein, or to this reader of Wittgenstein, the one who is at once still within the circle and aiming to inscribe a new circle outside it, through acts of reading so personal as to form the possibility of communication without the support of convention, but with the hope of their becoming the source of new conventions.'

'Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.'

'By groans and various sounds and various movements of parts of my body I would endeavour to express the intentions of my heart to persuade people to bow to my will. But I had not the power to express all that I wanted nor could I make my wishes understood by everybody.'

You got me into the habit of sleeping on one side of the bed. I haven't gotten back out of it since.

'Nietzsche wanted to be, and was, the Plato of his own Socrates.'

'But it’s Beavis who sees things most clearly.'

Music saves; but being able to play your music loud saves you more surely.

'Have you practiced so long to learn to read?'

When I was a child, I was asked who my hero was. I didn't have a hero but felt somewhat embarrassed not to have one when it appeared to be expected of me.

Eventually I decided that I would say that Steve Wozniak was my hero.

He wasn't, but he seemed like a good hero to have, if you had to have one.