“Maturity: knowing where you're crazy, trying to warn others of the fact and striving to keep yourself under control.”

“We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.”

“Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.”

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”

“Endeavoring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love.”

“Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.”

“After 40 (old age for most of man's history), one should strive to be more or less packed and ready to go were the end call to come.”