What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

...I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate things.

It is of no consequence to you what others think of you. What matters is what you think of them. That is how you live your life.

That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.

Never have varmints, only grandvarmints.