We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.

The office is a romantic enabler because you're always around the person you have a crush on. There's no escape from, and maybe no desire to escape from, those pressure-cooker conditions. And there's an automatic series of things you have to talk about all the time.

If someone were plucked from the group and given those responsibilities, they might find themselves growing more aloof, just by virtue of that promotion. Suddenly the group culture excludes you. I saw this in my own working life, and I don't think it's a coincidence - I sensed a kind of loneliness in middle managers especially.

Everyone desires relationships and community. Most people want to belong to a cohesive, like-minded group. It staves off loneliness. It promotes identity. These are natural and very human instincts.

She looks at herself in the mirror. The idea is to look sexy again. And for whom exactly? Yourself, of course. Yes, well, that's all wonderfully self-affirming and very strong-minded as any decent woman should be these days, but let's just face facts here and say that when a woman - no, when a person is thinking about feeling sexy, it is always with the idea of someone else in mind.

I know what to do with my life. I just don't know what to do with this one night.

If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter?