That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

A literary academic can no more pass a bookstore than an alcoholic can pass a bar.

It's hard to be happy, and safe, and applauded in a miserable world.

Why do long marriages occasionally endow their inhabitants with a rare kind of equilibrium otherwise almost unknown in human relations? My guess is that the value of the moment has at last overshadowed the long history of resentments, betrayals, and boredom.

as the years go on a sense of deep patience comes over one; one seems to know the virtue of ripeness, and the danger of rushing events.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

Professors of literature collect books the way a ship collects barnacles, without seeming effort.