one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time.

These short stories establish Sontag's originality . . . her unique vision, her success with experiments in the form . . . Sontag makes a wonderful stew of the past, the life caught in memory and imagination, serves it all up lavishly laced with silences, and provides us with a gourmand's series of short courses.

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring.

My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.

one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time.

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder.

Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed.