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

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

The greatest mystery of all is the human heart.

[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.

A politician is required to listen to humbug, talk humbug, condone humbug. The most we can hope for is that we don't actually believe it.

I still occasionally need to struggle but I now fear it less. The weapons I fight it with are also my consolations: books, music, food, wine, nature.

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.