“The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't”

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

“But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”

“...imagine anybody having lived forty-five or fifty years without knowing Hamlet! One might as well spend one's life in a coal mine.”

“There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn’t strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.”

“Human beings... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition.”