Our favorite people and our favorite stories become so not by any inherent virtue, but because they illustrate something deep in the grain, something… - Joan Didion

One thing you will note about shopping-center theory is that you could have thought of it yourself, and a course in it will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that business proceeds from mysteries too recondite for you and me.

When I am near the end of a book, I have to sleep in the same room with it.

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.