Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?

Towns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.

A political animal can be defined as a body that will go on circulating a petition even with its heart cut out.

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

Hard writing makes easy reading.

We are the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.