“What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.”

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

“After Carol had left, as Symons threw away a pile of used tissues and rearranged the cushions on the couch, he remarked that the most common and unhelpful illusion plaguing those who came to see him [as a career counselor] was the idea that they ought somehow, in the normal course of events, to have intuited--long before they had finished their degrees, started families, bought houses and risen to the top of law firms--what they should properly be doing with their lives. They were tormented by a residual notion of having through some error or stupidity on their part missed out on their true 'calling.”

“It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: "If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.”

“Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough.”

“You can tell a paragraph is slipping out of control when there's a runaway use of the word 'hence.”

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.”