Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

Hoping to fashion a mirror, the lover doth polish the face of his beloved until he produces a skull.

By the time a partnership dissolves, it has dissolved.

Mozart's music gives us permission to live.

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.

Revolution is just one crowd taking power from another.