In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.

Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure.

You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

Time had changed the magical to mundane