“I do admire efficiency,’ said Marthe. ‘But how tedious it can be in excess.”

“I can do a week in a weekend. That’s not how efficient I am, that’s how little I work.”

“I never expect anything,’ said Marthe. ‘It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.’ ‘I’m all for a level, low-pitched existence,’ said Philippa. ‘And when you see your way back to one, for heaven’s sake don’t forget to tell me.’ At which Marthe, surprisingly, laughed aloud.”

“I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.”

“I do not admire the excess of a virtue as of valour, except I see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as in Epaminondas, who had the greatest valour and the greatest kindness. For otherwise it is not to rise, it is to fall. We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space.”

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”