“There is often an inverse correlation between genius and personal hygiene.”

“Life does often get in the way of one's reading.”

“Such an awful fragility of love he thought that plans are made and broken and remade in these gaps between rational behavior.”

“Look here, it's all very tidy and convenient to see the world in black and white.....It's a particular passion of young men eager to sweep away their dusty elders. However, philosophical rigidity is usually combined with a complete lack of education or real-world experience, and it is often augmented with strange haircuts and an aversion to bathing.”

“My dear Mrs. Ali, I would hardly refer to you as old," he said. "You are in what I would call the very prime flowering of mature womanhood." It was a little grandiose but he hoped to surprise a blush. Instead she laughed out loud at him. "I have never heard anyone try to trowel such a thick layer of flattery on the wrinkles and fat deposits of advanced middle age, Major," she said. "I am fifty-eight years old and I think I have slipped beyond flowering. I can only hope now to dry out into one of those everlasting bouquets.”

“He wondered whether it was his fault Roger had the perceptiveness of concrete.”

“It was frustratingly common that children were no sooner gone from the nest and established in their own homes ... than they began to infantilize their own parents and wish them dead, or at least in assisted living.”