Most people ask of their friends that they understand them, but, on balance, I think I prefer a friend who understands himself.

While it is necessary to eat and therefore it is pleasantest to eat food that looks handsome and tastes good, on the other hand there are things I would far rather do than spend time in a kitchen.

cookbooks, I found, are intended for people with time to cook - and, surprisingly often, for people who already know how to cook.

The cruelest affront is treating the person as exactly the person he is. We all long to be understood, but not for what we are. We long to be understood for what we might have been had all been for the best in the best of all possible worlds and, at the same time, to be forgiven for what we are.

One does not marry to become a judge of the spouse's behavior. If a marriage license is mistaken for a hunting license and disapproval, punishment, and threat of withdrawal of love are employed as weapons, all one bags is one's own unhappiness.

If you defy the system long enough you'll be rewarded. At first life takes revenge and reduces you to a sniveling mess. But keep sniveling, have the madness, the audacity, to do what interests you, forget about your pension, and eventually life will say all right, we'll let you do it.

Men fear being used; women fear being used up.