“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. ”

“What is the past, after all, but a vast sheet of darkness in which a few moments, pricked apparently at random, shine?”

“A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership.”

“A yawning repetitiveness as of a man who knows few words but will not stop talking.”

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

“Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.”

“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”