Memory - the very skin of life.

Sentences in which I have tried for a certain light tone -- many of those have to do with events, upheavals, destructions that caused me to weep like a child.

I am alone here in New York, no longer a we.

Here in the city the worst thing that can happen to a nation has happened: we are a people afraid of its youth.

In the long run wives are to be paid in a peculiar coin — consideration for their feelings. As it usually turns out this is an enormous, unthinkable inflation few men will remit, or if they will, only with a sense of being overcharged.

Flattery is a challenge. The proper turning away from it, undercutting, diminishing it without offense or vehemence, is a social grace sweeter even than the swift determination to keep ahead in the race of hospitality.

[On sociability in Italy:] You may be a hermit or an innkeeper.