Quotes from Eva Hoffman

It may be that just as tonality recurs in music and realism in painting, so the idea of liberalism recurs in politics-though each time in a different vein.

There's nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

Laughter is the lightning rod of play, the eroticism of conversation.

Sometimes I long to forget… It is painful to be conscious of two worlds.

A woman should love with her mind. Let men love with their hearts.

Anger can be borne - it can even be satisfying - if it can gather into words and explode in a storm, or a rapier-sharp attack. But without these means of ventilation, it only turns back inward, building and swirling like a head of stream - building to an impotent, murderous rage.

The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become--and such lucidity is a form of joy.

To be an adult is to be close to death.

When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.

Why look any further if you've discovered complete satisfaction.

I know that language will be a crucial instrument, that I can overcome the stigma of my marginality, the weight of presumption against me, only if the reassuringly right sounds come out of my mouth.

Reading creates a sense of human fellowship. It is never (or rarely) a public activity, but in putting us in direct contact with other minds and sensibilities, it is a form of solitude which banishes loneliness. It can offer the consolation of knowing we are not alone, in our pleasures or in our suffering. It is in situations of deprivation that the value of reading – the deep need for books – becomes more vividly apparent.

The thing about fanatics is they have charisma." "They have no scruples that's what makes them irresistable." "There's no one like an intellectual to become fanatical with ideas." "Madness is most dangerous when it is rational

A power struggle is always better than absolute power.

The past depends on the angle from which it is seen and from which it has been lived

Mimesis, it seems, works smoothly in only one direction, and life refuses conveniently to mirror the art in which it's seemingly mirrored.

We cannot fully be human without thinking about what being human means. Our forms of momentary self-indulgence are many, but it is hyperactivity which is out favoured as well as most pervasive form of hedonism; and by its very nature, it is a form of gratification which undermines reflection - and well-being - of a deeper or more sustained kind.

Momentary pleasures of hedonism are distinct from deeper and more lasting satisfaction; and in order to achieve such satisfaction, we need to reflect on who we are and what our lives are for. We cannot be fully human without thinking about what being human means.

Observing what is around us and registering errant impressions is a state not so much of passive inaction as of alert receptivity. Allowing ourselves to notice, to be open to our surroundings, is a way of awakening our curiosity in the world outside ourselves. The

True engagement – the ability to give ourselves deliberately and unreservedly to a task or a personal interaction – arises from a clear sense of our own desires, goals and intentions. It is when our energies and our perspective are replenished that we can return to our active lives with a renewed sense of pleasure and commitment. In other words, it is only if we periodically disengage, that we can become truly and effectively engaged.

Happy! That will-o'-the-wisp.

Our contemporary forms of reading threaten to reduce that amplification. Aside from the fact that overusing digital technologies eventually makes us less mentally agile and more forgetful (as research increasingly shows), the kind of segmented, bite-sized reading we do on the internet fragments and constricts the 'space to think', instead of expanding it; in a sense, it reduces or even rubbishes our mental experience. Our minds

In the long term, the fragmentation of attention, a breaking up of focus and mental continuity, can disrupt neural connections in the brain and eventually lead to a literally 'shallower' neurological structure. It makes us – on the physiological level of the brain, as well as of the mind – less capable of concentration and continuous thought.

There is the great ocean below, and the great sky above, and nothing between me and pure possibility.