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

I learned early and at that kitchen table that there are ways of avoiding, without guilt, the commitments of love.

Childhood is the one prison from which there's no escape, the one sentence from which there's no appeal. We all serve our time.

In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.

Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim.

Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

A picnic may well be a metaphor for life. The essentials for happiness are the right company, moderate if sanguine expectations and a reasonable standard of physical sustenance and comfort, the whole being bedeviled by the belief that there is always something better to be had if only one presses on.