the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring.

Private problems don't constitute an excuse for bad manners.

That's what a conscience is made of, scar tissue ... Little strips and pieces of remorse sewn together year by year until they formed a distinctive pattern, a design for living.

Perfect young men don't get murdered, they don't even get born.

Don't borrow trouble. The interest is too high.

Sanity is a matter of culture and convention. If it's a crazy culture you live in, then you have to be irrational to want to conform. A completely rational person would recognize that the culture was crazy and refuse to conform. But by not conforming, he is the one who would be judged crazy by that particular society.

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines.