Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good, they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover.

What I would like to give my daughter is freedom. And this is something that must be given by example, not by exhortation.

A Soul is partly given, partly wrought; remember always that you are the Maker of your own Soul.

Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?

beware the Lure of a handsome Face, the all too ready Assumption that the lovely Façade must needs have lovely Chambers within; for as 'tis with Great Houses, so, too, with Great Men.

Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.

There's another part of getting older that's just wonderful. Which is you see the way the stories turn out with peoples' lives.