In a nation of celebrity worshipers, amid followers of the cult of personality, individual modesty becomes a heroic quality. I find heroism in the acceptance of anonymity, in the studied resistance to the normal American tropism toward the limelight.

the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

trying to squash a rumor is like trying to unring a bell.

The law changes and flows like water, and . . . the stream of women's rights law has become a sudden rushing torrent.

Faithful horoscope-watching, practiced daily, provides just the sort of small but warm and infinitely reassuring fillip that gets matters off to a spirited start.

How is the newcomer to deal with Rome? What is one to make of this marble rubble, this milk of wolves, this blood of Caesars, this sunrise of Renaissance, this baroquery of blown stone, this warm hive of Italians, this antipasto of civilization?

The mark of a true crush... is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward.