Upon becoming fifty the one thing you can't afford is habit.

Odd, the years it took to learn one simple fact: that the prize just ahead, the next job, publication, love affair, marriage always seemed to hold the key to satisfaction but never, in the longer run, sufficed.

Once you are thought selfish, not only are you forgiven a life designed mainly to suit yourself, which in anyone else would appear monstrous, but if an impulse to generosity should by chance overpower you, you will get five times the credit of some poor selfless soul who has been oozing kindness for years.

one sank into the ancient sin of anomie when challenges failed.

Normal is absolutely my least favorite word.

In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.

I don't know why togetherness was ever held up as an ideal of marriage. Away from home for both, then together, that's much better.