We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.

We envy only those whom we feel ourselves to be like; we envy only members of our reference group. There are few successes more unendurable than those of our close friends.

There is always the option of being emotionally lazy, that is, of quoting.

Envy: a confused, tangled guide to one's own ambitions.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

What should worry us is not the number of people that oppose us, but how good their reasons are for doing so.