I was not sure I wanted to issue orders to life; I rather liked the Greek notion of allowing Chance to take a formative hand in my affairs.

I have no skills with machines. I fear them, and because I cannot help attributing human qualities to them, I suspect that they hate me and will kill me if they can.

Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.

The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar.

It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.