So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy,the survivors of the abyss sat hollow-eyed and silent, trying to comprehend a world without war.

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another.

Irony is the attendant of hope and the fuel of hope is innocence.

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class.