How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but — mainly — to ourselves.

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

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

One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.

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

When I was still quite young I had a complete presentiment of life. It was like the nauseating smell of cooking escaping from a ventilator: you don't have to have eaten it to know that it would make you throw up.

A couple's first task, it has always seemed to me, is to solve the problem of breakfast; if this can be worked out amicably, most other difficulties can too.