How to live had started out as an analytical problem of how to place himself so as to intercept the flow of money in the society.

... if you love your country why is it necessary to hate other countries?

It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.

For the political world, I have come to believe, is fundamentally beyond anyone's control, yet we all go on as though it were a kind of vehicle that only needs a change of drivers in order to steer it away from its frequent hair-raising visits to the edge of the cliff.

I soon knew that I could fix things better than he, with his tendency to storm a mechanical problem in the hope that by sheer righteous determination it would yield to him.

But we are mostly what we are, and the turtle stretching toward delicious buds on high does not lighten his carapace by his resolve.

It was not really possible to understand oneself, let alone another human being.

You specialize in something until one day it is specializing in you.

... vulgarity has no nation.