The spiritual destiny of Hawaii has been shaped by a Calvinist theory of paternalism enacted by the descendants of the missionaries who had carried it there: a will to do good for unfortunates regardless of what the unfortunates thought about it.

As to why people like Joseph Lelyveld are writing memoirs, I think they're just catching on the coattails of the trend.

The irreversibility of time. That's the hardest thing to accept at our age, that's the most violent aspect of death.

Friendship is by its very nature freer of deceit than any other relationship we can know because it is the bond least affected by striving for power, physical pleasure, or material profit, most liberated from any oath of duty or of constancy. With Eros the body stands naked, in friendship our spirit is denuded.

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.

The act of nutrition is not a purely physiological event... The family meal is a formality that cultivates in us... a capacity for sharing, generosity, thoughtfulness, a talent for civilized conversation.

Lovers, children, heroes, none of them do we fantasize as extravagantly as we fantasize our parents.