“Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disi...”

“The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideasto make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitra...”

“Theres no escaping it, hed been fond of telling us when he was well, the way you look defines who you are. You might argue for your soul, or your heart, but everyone else in the world will judge yo...”

“The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires...”

“I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they...”

“Mrs. P.? Oh no. Shes the help. Bosnian, you know. Or is it Serbian? An absolute treasure, anyway. As I always say to Bel, if theres one good thing to come out of all this fuss in the Balkans, its t...”

“Unless, of course, one chose to join the increasing numbers who had decided they were so deep in despair that there was nothing worse to fear in life. These were men who had finally, and so early, ...”

“Jimmy put in a word and told them that if I made it, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without paying them back. That I'd sooner die than owe anyone money for helping me. Apparently Jimmy knew...”

“The ideas of debtor and creditor as to what constitutes a good time never coincide.”

“Inspirational quotes are only making you more miserable.”

“It was deeply a part of Lee's kindness and understanding that man's right to kill himself is inviolable, but sometimes a friend can make it unnecessary”

“The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.”

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to ...”

“You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physica...”

“If you go to Singapore or Amsterdam or Seoul or Buenos Aires or Islamabad or Johannesburg or Tampa or Istanbul or Kyoto, you'll find that the people differ wildly in the way they dress, in their ma...”