In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the center holds. Or so it seems.

My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

And then there were the wallflowers who had recognized for years that the thing was hopeless, who had found in that information a kind of calm. They no longer tried, with a bright and desperate effort, to sustain a conversation with somebody's brother, somebody's usher, somebody's roommate, somebody's roommate's usher's brother... The category of wallflower who had given up on all this was very quiet, not indifferent, only quiet. And she always brought a book.