Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.

Morals are a matter of private agreement; decency is of public concern.

All happiness is a form of innocence.

The American child, driven to school by bus and stupefied by television, is losing contact with reality. There is an enormous gap between the sheer weight of the textbooks that he carries home from school and his capacity to interpret what is in them.

Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.

If you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie

I believe that friendship, like love, of which it is a particular kind, requires nearly as much art as a successful choreography.