“It is just a lonely certainty that we are right and everybody else wrong, which makes it worthwhile for us busy-bodies to go on making a nuisance of ourselves. Our job is to keep both the simple Philistine and the greedy rich in their places, to prevent them, in their stupidity and avarice, from destroying everything that is left.”

“Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.”

“Everything everybody does is so - I don’t know - not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”

“Sometimes the most worthwhile things are right in front of our eyes. We just make them hard because we think that gives them more value.”

“If we think our job here on earth is to fix ourselves, we will keep looking for the broken places. If we believe our job is to be kind, we will keep lavishing love on ourselves.”

“It's just this: that there are places we all come from-deep-rooty-common places- that makes us who we are. And we disdain them or treat them lightly at our peril. We turn our backs on them at the risk of self-contempt. There is a sense in which we need to go home again-and can go home again. Not to recover home, no. But to sanctify memory.”