The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice.

I am the cat that walks alone.

Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.

If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.

Because I actively enjoy sleeping, dreams, the unexplainable dialogues that take place in my head as I am drifting off, all that, I tell myself that lying down to an afternoon nap that goes on and on through eternity is not something to be concerned about. What spoils this pleasant fancy is the recollection that when people are dead they don't read books. This I find unbearable.

A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.

The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters