History is not the proper midden for digging up novelties. Perhaps that is one reason why a nation bent on novelty ignores it.

Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.

If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get.

We were going to leave a mark on the world but instead the world left marks on us.

I am terribly glad to be alive; and when I have wit enough to think about it, terribly proud to be a man and an American, with all the rights and privileges that those words connote; and most of all I am humble before the responsibilities that are also mine. For no right comes without a responsibility, and being born luckier than most of the world's millions, I am also born more obligated.

Every time. You know why? I want to fail. I work like a dog for twenty years so I'll have the supreme pleasure of failing. Never knew anybody like that, did you? I'm very cunning. I plan it in advance. I fool myself right up to the last minute, and then the time comes and I know how cunningly I've been planning it all the time. I've been a failure all my life.

I am impressed by how much of my grandparent's life depended on continuities, contacts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships.