if you understand something, you don't forgive it, you are the thing itself: forgiveness is for what you don't understand.

Laughter is by definition healthy.

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

I treasure solitude. One doesn't have to have human contact.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.

And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It is a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.

...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.