Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.

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.

The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.

Love can be understood only "from the inside," as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.

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.

All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal.

Familiarity can no longer be a necessary condition for trust.