The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

Sometimes it seems that we might have been happier if we had once had an aristocracy to blame everything on.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.