There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don't see that connection at all.

Trust is almost always conditional, focused, qualified, and therefore limited.

Building trust means thinking about trust in a positive way.

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

Familiarity can no longer be a necessary condition for trust.

Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together.