Never take liquor into the bedroom. Don't stick anything in your ears. Be anything but an architect. Live in a nice country rather than a powerful one. Power makes everybody crazy. Get somebody to teach you to play a musical instrument.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.

What the Gospels actually said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they aren't well connected.

Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.

The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.

... uncritical love is the only real treasure.