Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children.

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

People who boast of happy marriages are, I submit, usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars.

The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.

What makes you imagine ... that anything of importance can be taught in a school?