“I avoid contemporary TV...politics...art: all too frantic, fevered, and frivolous, or else angry, bitter.”

“Why I love him is, I don't know, because he seems very brave and kind and sweet. All that stuff but something else, too. I don't know what something else, but he's different somehow, and what I'm trying to say is it's a good kind of difference, whatever it is.”

“Wealth is power, and power is the only thing about which contemporary culture cares.”

“If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.”

“...if one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.”

“All I asked was that I be spared surprises, although, in this world of six billion souls, all acting with free will and too many with audacity, surprises are inevitable, too few of them are the kind that make you smile and that lift your heart.”

“... and she had worn bitterness as though it were a crown.”