I discovered that Human Nature was not, as I had always supposed, a fixed and unalterable entity, that wars are not caused by a natural urge in men to fight, that ownership of land and factories is not necessarily the natural reward of greater wisdom and energy.

The character and mentality of the keepers may be of more importance in understanding prisons than the character and mentality of the kept.

In childbirth, as in other human endeavors, fashions start with the rich, are then adopted by the aspirant middle class with an assist from the ever-watchful media, and may or may not eventually filter down to the poor.

Things on the whole are much faster in America; people don't 'stand for election', they 'run for office.'

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Gracious dying is a huge, macabre and expensive joke on the American public.

A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.