I think the wish to disassociate from the cult of self is a good human impulse,

The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.

That's not the same thing as saying that the latest account that he gives should be unmistakably taken as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wouldn't say he never wanted to be followed or be called a leader. (But) he probably wanted it less than it seemed at the time.

When a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

When a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

I certainly wish I were as good-looking as Aaron Eckhart.