The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age - what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. ... It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

As for death, one gets used to it, even if it is only other people is death you get used to.

But I had been in love pretty often and I didn't think it stood the wear and tear.

It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) --to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart.

A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.