It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

The sun had gone down behind the tall apartments of the movie stars in the West Fifties, and the unclear voices of children, already gathered like crikets on the grass, rose through the hot twilight.

Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope.

Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power-at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.

The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.

The mind of a little child is fascinating, for it looks on old things with new eyes-but at about twelve this changes. The adolescent offers nothing, can do nothing, say nothing that the adult cannot do better.

This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness.