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.

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.

how the French can talk. About a stew, about a fly on the parapet, about death, about anything.

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

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

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make your life bearable.

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.