That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

Recently, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke talked about the ways the lives of human beings will be changed in the next century. At least half of them I didn't understand at all, though I'm sure that kids today would know exactly what he meant. I'm somewhere in the past. I do think, however, that our brains have been damaged by technology. I meet kids who don't seem to be capable of reading a long sentence, much less a long book.

Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights.

Pleasure resorts are like film stars and royalty... embarrassed by the figures they cut in the fantasies of people who have never met them.

Once I read autobiography as what the writer thought about his or her life. Now I think, 'This is what they thought at that time'. An interim report - that is what an autobiography is.

I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married.