Life's Work: A Memoir

My relationship with my father was cloaked in secrets and taboos.

Our ideas about what we are or can do or want, those can change.

Agassiz put him on the ship and took him up the Amazon and literally threw him off the boat. And in that moment was born every aspect of William James’s philosophy, which is that you cannot think your way to right action, you have to act your way to right thinking. And from that came the James idea of pragmatism, that the good is what works, and th

I believe in God’s purpose, not knowing it. I ask Him, moving in me, to allow me to see His will. I ask Him, moving in others, to allow them to see it.

I still had this voice in my head, “I’m not really like them. I’m a degenerate.” And with my degenerate friends maybe I told myself, “Well, I don’t quite fit in here either, do I? I’m supposed to be reading.” Now looking back, clearly I was a part of all of it. I’m not this or I’m not that, that was the lie. But you don’t feel that at the time.

Absent action, all animals are sad.

the voice I would hear went something like, “Oh! He wakes. Oh, that’s his idea of urinating, with a split stream. That’s how he thinks coffee is supposed to be made. Look, that’s how he thinks the ignition of the car should be turned on.”

“The truth is you don’t have much say on whether people love you for you. That’s the miracle. It just happens.”