Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.

I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.

Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.

Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that "usually rather." Safe generalizations are quite boring.

No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain.

What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.