The rush of power to the head is not as becoming as a new hat

Mail from home was so important when you were traveling. It kept you in touch with the familiar, even the part you were running from.

It's especially fitting that they call a cruise ship 'she,' for she is pregnant with a thousand adult embryos who long to stay forever warm and sheltered in this great white womb.

Fear is for the old. Lack of it is one of the joys of youth.

[On parents:] They're not gods to be pleased or devils to be exorcised. They're just there, and we can only hope they understand when we seem less than perfect. And try to understand, ourselves, when they're not all we'd like them to be.

When you get to be my age, all your friends have either died or moved to Florida.

Eighty's a landmark and people treat you differently than they do when you're seventy-nine. At seventy-nine, if you drop something it just lies there. At eighty, people pick it up for you.