A life without tragedy would not be worth living.

In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.

Anarchy works. Italy has proved it for a thousand years.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?

If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dream.

My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'