We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits.

art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe.

If the poor ever feel poor as the rich do, we will have a most bloody revolution.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

The earth itself is slightly resistant to routine.

Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.

Human beings are mercifully so constituted as to be able to conceal from themselves what they intend to do until they are well into the doing of it.