The fear of saying something stupid (which stupid people never have) has censored far more good ideas than bad ones.

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.

Most victories are, in the best way, acts of revenge.

One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.

It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.

One's doing well if age improves even slightly one's capacity to hold on to that vital truism: "This too shall pass.