He divides conversation into two categories: when you speak, and when you listen to yourself speak.

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.

You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.

The word is the most imprecise of signs. Only a science-obsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect.

The price of tapping water into every house is that no one values water any more.

My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.

An answer is always a form of death.