Intelligence forbids tears.
Living in a small town anywhere means preserving one's self behind a mask.
My mother died happily of a stroke in her seventies.
People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.
What matters most is that we learn from living.
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.