True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriends --and he accepts it.

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older."

"You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination."

"The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. . . . But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few."

"No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start."