Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.

The tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.

[My father and his friends] believed in equality for women without troubling to acquire the basic domestic skills which would have made that equality possible.

It is always easy to question the judgement of others in matters of which we may be imperfectly informed.

I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.