Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.

Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.

Ancient boundaries are meaningless, except for political purposes; old divisions of clan and tribe are sentimental remnants of the pre-atomic age; neither creed nor color nor place of origin is relevant to the realities of modern power to utterly seek and destroy.

There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.

A winner knows how much he still has to learn, even when he is considered an expert by others; a loser wants to be considered an expert by others before he has learned enough to know how little he knows.

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.