Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.

To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness.

Yes, of course we were pretentious -- what else is youth for?

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.

Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]

But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

May you be ordinary, as the poet once wished the new-born baby.