I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.

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.

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.

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect.

A notorious inability to express emotions makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide.

The desire for high status is never stronger than in situations where "ordinary" life fails to answer a median need for dignity and comfort.