Illiteracy at the poverty level (mainly a matter of bad grammar) does not alarm me nearly as much as the illiteracy of the well-to-do.

The furniture and trappings in the apartment are all in a state of flux - here today, gone tomorrow. Nothing is anchored to its place, not even the coffee-pot, which floats off and returns, on the tide of the signora's marine nature.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.

The happy ending is our national belief.

The fact is that gardening, more than most of our other activities except sometimes love-making, confronts us with the inexplicable.