We live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving.

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

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

I am fifty years old and I have never known what it is to love. I can write those words, know them to be true, but feel only the regret that a tone-deaf man must feel because he can't appreicate music, a regret less keen because it is for something never known, not for something lost.

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

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.

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.