The rare, delicate flavor of a life after retiring in one's sixties, whatever one has "retired" from, the pleasure I experienced beyond my job at Columbia, is a gift of life in the last decades. but it is not easily learned. . . . But sometimes, the only way to live is to get out, or at least seriously to contemplate getting out, doing the impossible,flinging the conventional tea.

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.

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.

People who are genuinely involved in life, not just living a routine they've contrived to protect them from disaster, always seem to have more demanded of them than they can easily take on.

Androgyny suggests a spirit of reconciliation between the sexes.

maturity ... is letting things happen.

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.