He didn’t really like travel, of course. He liked the idea of travel, and the memory of travel, but not travel itself.

Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.

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?

Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.

we must be precise with love, its language and its gestures. If it is to save us, we must look at it as clearly as we should learn to look at death

Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.

I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.