Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.

Love, always love. Perhaps that’s what we’re all looking for.

Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.

If all power corrupts, then a doctor, who literally holds life and death in his hands, must be at particular risk.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.

gossip ... was like any other commodity in the marketplace. You received it only if you had something of value to give.