Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.

Don't laugh at youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find his own.

I can't forgive my friends for dying; I don't find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

All our lives we are putting pennies — our most golden pennies — into penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.