Even a small, everyday lie is a clue to the personality and preoccupations of the liar, like a dream or any other confection of the mind, that is half-conscious and half-unconscious, as all creative acts must be.

the true and the plausible are rarely the same.

Falling in love is like religious conversion. It goes on for a long time below the threshold before it reaches consciousness.

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

money is an acquired taste that grows as it is fed.

In a city you thought of all life as human life. You had to live in the heart of the woods to realize that humanity was a slight ripple on the surface of a flood of life that seeped into every vacant crack, flowed into every biological vacuum the moment it occurred.

Other people's children, like other people's love affairs, were so much less interesting than one's own.