Her own contempt for any forms of pressure society might put on her was so profound and instinctive that she as instinctively despised anyone who paid tribute to them.

In Shanghai, I saw great contrasts. On one street there would be impressive shops selling copies of the latest word in glamorous European fashion, and around the corner on a back street there were poor families crammed into one room with a naked light bulb. One evening I heard a Chinese family singing "Happy Birthday." It was weird. You would have thought that they'd have their own happy birthday song. Every dominant society in the world - whether it's French or British or American - imposes its culture on less developed societies.

As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.

My father was always so mingled with rage at his life.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.