History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.

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]

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

Though why should we expect age to mellow us? If it isn't life's business to reward merit, why should it be life's business to give us warm comfortable feelings towards its end? What possible evolutionary purpose could nostalgia serve?

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art.