There's this old saying that, if you aren't particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don't want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don't know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I've never regretted it.

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.

Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?

Philosophy has forgotten about children

I asked her about life, and it was as if she rummaged around in a dusty chest to get me the answers.

The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?

It wasn't that I forgot Hanna. But at a certain point the memory of her stopped accompanying me wherever I went. She stayed behind, the way a city stays behind as a train pulls out of the station. It's there, somewhere behind you, and you could go back and make sure of it. But why should you?