Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours.

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.

I love you, Eliza,” I said. She thought about it. “No,” she said at last, “I don’t like it.” “Why not?” I said. “It’s as though you were pointing a gun at my head,” she said. “It’s just a way of getting somebody to say something they probably don’t mean. What else can I say, or anybody say, but, ‘I love you, too’?

There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain.

Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school. Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.

Maturity, the way I understand it, is knowing what your limitations are.