The worst losses come at night.

Anger can be borne - it can even be satisfying - if it can gather into words and explode in a storm, or a rapier-sharp attack. But without these means of ventilation, it only turns back inward, building and swirling like a head of stream - building to an impotent, murderous rage.

There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.

The worst losses come at night.

While we allow the inhabitants of imaginary remote corners the authenticity of savages or sufferers, we rarely suppose them to possess the authenticity of complex, sophisticated perceptions.

Laughter is the lightning rod of play, the eroticism of conversation.

It may be that just as tonality recurs in music and realism in painting, so the idea of liberalism recurs in politics-though each time in a different vein.