The gesture with which one generation guards the next is the movement, and the only time we see it clearly, of life itself.

Critics have been amusing themselves for a long time by auscultating fiction for signs of heart failure.

... the whole of society in Washington is to some degree political. It is like no other capital city known to me, in that political thinking, the whole business, technical and personal, of politics, is not diluted by an equal interest in art, industry, amusement, anything you like. I don't meant that these are non-existent in Washington -- only that they are subdued to the ruling passion.

giving the utmost of herself to three absorbing interests [marriage, motherhood, career] ... was a problem for a superwoman, and a job for a superwoman, and only some such fabled being could have accomplished it with success.

Very rare, the intelligence of the heart. The intelligence of the whimsical brain is less rare, less attaching, sometimes tedious.

Failures to love are irremediable and irredeemable.

... the stomach is near the heart and one appetite pricks on another.