“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved. ”

“No matter what measures are taken, doctors will sometimes falter, and it isn't reasonable to ask that we achieve perfection. What is reasonable is to ask that we never cease to aim for it.”

“Life is achievement....Give yourself an aim, something you want to do, then go after it, breaking through everything, with nothing in mind but your aim, all will, all concentration, and get it.”

“Perhaps we can conceive of the ironist as the fetishist's apprentice, reaching out for all readers, ensnaring them in a tangle of ambiguity, uncertainty and indecision from which there is no escape. Irony, quite possibly, makes fetishists of us all.”

“It is one of life's great ironies that most people's only connection to success is their attachment to the pain of not having achieved it.”

“She was learning, quite late, what many people around her appeared to have known since childhood that life can be perfectly satisfying without major achievements.”