The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.

Faith is simply whatever is real to us.

I wasn't brought up to be dazzled by money or fame.

For the first time, I had been struck by the excitement of the traveler who looks history in her subtle face.

The problem is simply finding the right person. Ask Plato. Just make sure she finishes your thoughts and you finish hers. That's all you need.

...what will we someday do, I always wonder, without the pleasures of turning through books and stumbling on things we never meant to find?

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.