We read because we are essentially alone.

We don't really have a movie industry; we have a trailer industry. The movie guys make five minutes worth of stuff to get people in the theatre, and eighty-five minutes of filler.

While being madly in love is fun, perhaps one should aspire to be sanely in love.

What exactly did we learn in kindergarten? Nothing we wouldn't have learned if we;d stayed home. Okay, we learned that sometimes, by the time you get to the bathroom, it's too late.

We like to look for patterns and find connections in unrelated events. This way we can explain them to ourselves. Life seems neater, or at least less messy. We need to feel we are in control: it is integral to our self-esteem. We also know, though we deny it, that we are not in control. So we settle for the illusions of control. What if we stopped fooling ourselves?

What we call the wisdom that comes with age is usually simple caution.

Yes, it's true that you can't learn everything from books. But you do learn something about everything.