At twenty your choices are almost unlimited. At fifty you're a prisoner of past decisions. At seventy you have no free will left at all.

Thunderstorms were rare in California, but when they came they were, like most things in California, larger than life.

... law is a substitute for love.

There's always trouble in the Middle East. I can't recall any time in my life when there hasn't been trouble there.

Privacy is like sleep - something you don't appreciate until you have to go without it.

the unconscious forces that govern accessible memory are the most arbitrary of editors and the absolute masters of our lives.

That's the worst thing about money - the moment you have some you begin to suspect everyone of trying to take it away from you. And usually they are.