You can always spot clothes made in a good place.

I don't think many writers like their best-known piece of work, particularly when it was written a long time ago.

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth.

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter 'repented', changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

I'm too old to recover, too narrow to forgive myself.