Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather thanachievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.

Perhaps that is what love is -- the momentary or prolonged refusal to think of another person in terms of power.

There is no neutrality. There is only greater or lesser awareness of one's bias.

More people should visit Antarctica, metaphorically speaking, on their own. That is one of the conclusions I have reached, one of my recommendations: explore something, even if it's just a bookshelf. Make a stab in the dark. Read off the beaten path. Your attention is precious. Be careful of other people trying to direct how you dispense it. Confront your own values. Decide what it is you are looking for an then look for it. Perform connoisseurship. We all need to create our own vocabulary of appreciation, or we are trapped by the vocabulary of others.

biographies are a little like marriages: You only have room in your life for one or two.

an autobiography held out the promise of hearing truths that only friends confess to one another but are knowledge you need to live.

One form of loneliness is to have a memory and no one to share it with.