Older guys have too much emotional baggage. They’ve already lived their lives. - Edmund White

I was three people: the boy who smelled bad when I was with my sister; the boy who was wise and kind beyond his years when I was with my mother; but when I was alone not a boy at all but a principle of power, of absolute power.

The observer is a prince who, wearing a disguise, takes pleasure everywhere.

That eminently Parisian compromise between laziness and activity known as flanerie.

Americans are particularly ill-suited to be flaneurs. They are always driven by the urge towards self-improvement.

In New York you can tell by people's body language that no one cares what other people think of them, whereas in Paris everyone is judging everyone and the only people who have this American-style insouciance are the insane.

He's scattered, his sentences trail off, he sighs frequently, as though he's so intelligent he's always frustrated by the formulaic nature of speech (each sentence a ride you can't get off once the attendant buckles you into the car).