“Sex -- the great inequality, the great miscalculator, the great Irritator.”
“The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.”
“When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much.”
“A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again.”
“If a dog doesn't put you first where are you both? In what relation? A dog needs God. It lives by your glances, your wishes. It even shares your humor. This happens about the fifth year. If it doesn't happen you are only keeping an animal.”
“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To ''Why am I here?'' To uselessness. It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.”
“It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fond of (as one is fond of oneself) --to hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colors.”
“Judges don't age. Time decorates them.”
“As for death one gets used to it, even if it's only other people's death you get used to.”
“The pleasure of one's effect on other people still exists in age -- what's called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.”
“In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism. Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again. We are not ridiculous to ourselves. We are ageless. That is the luxury of the wedding ring.”