Yeah, you

"I’m sympathetic to people’s desire not to talk about stuff. The human animal is a fragile creature, and we’ve got a lot on our plate, all of us. The capacity to talk honestly and with perspective and calm about very personal stuff is not going to be in everyone’s remit. There are some amazing people I know who you just couldn’t go near with these kinds of topics. They’re not going to talk to you about their love life, and they’re not going to speculate on the meaning of life, and maybe that doesn’t matter. There are lots of ways to live that don’t involve introspection or even high degrees of self-knowledge. However there’s no doubt that, generally, there’s an improvement in people’s level of satisfaction and fulfilment if they are able to introspect and to do that very difficult work of taking stock of their lives, their family upbringing, the forces that shape them, the drives that make them do what they do. The more people are able to get a handle on some of these things, the better able they are to control their lives. But it’s not for nothing that we’ve got this very strong impulse to repress, to deny, to block thought, to head for the television, to head for alcohol, to take drugs, to immerse ourselves in distraction. A lot of this stuff is too difficult to think about, so I’m sympathetic to that. Personally, my life is about trying to raise the level of knowledge and self-introspection. That’s what I like to do in my life, and like to do with people in my social circle."

"When Obama made his announcement about gay (marriage), I flashed back to (Lyndon B.) Johnson four days after President Kennedy is assassinated. He has to give his first speech to Congress and his advisers are sitting around and saying ‘Don’t mention civil rights. Don’t use up your political capital on civil rights. It’s a great cause, but it’s a lost cause.’ You know what Johnson says? ‘What’s a presidency for, then?’ And he says, in his speech, ‘The first thing we have to do is pass the Civil Rights bill.’"