“Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.”

There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.

Every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.

We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.

Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

Sooner or later; one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Gratitude is really, really attractive. A child who is genuinely grateful makes you want to do anything for her, and that is true of adults as well.

Odd how we focus on studying wars at at school to form our ‘education’. No wonder we know so little about making and forging peace as adults.

My mom and I are like sisters. We kind of grew up together. She always treated me as an adult. I never had curfew. She’s a workaholic, like I am. We’re not super family-oriented people, you know?

Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.

I certainly feel that an adult woman has a right to determine what happens to her life and body.

Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good.

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

Adulterers in churches and pornography in the schools, you got gangsters in power and lawbreakers making rules. When you gonna wake up?